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Jose Ortega Y Gassett, The Revolt Of The Masses

CHAPTER IV: THE INCREASE OF LIFE

        THE rule of the masses and the raising of the level, the height of the time which this indicates, are in their turn only symptoms of a more complete and more general fact. This fact is almost grotesque and incredible in its stark and simple truth. It is just this, that the world has suddenly grown larger, and with it and in it, life itself. To start with, life has become, in actual fact, world-wide in character; I mean that the content of existence for the average man of to-day includes the whole planet; that each individual habitually lives the life of the whole world. Something more than a year ago the people of Seville could follow, hour by hour, in the newspapers, what was happening to a few men near the North Pole; that is to say, that icebergs passed drifting against the burning background of the Andalusian landscape. Each portion of the earth is no longer shut up in its own geometrical position, but for many of the purposes of human life acts upon other portions of the planet. In accordance with the physical principle that things are wherever their effects are felt, we can attribute to-day to any point on the globe the most effective ubiquity....  Read Complete

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