Guglielmo Ferrero

“ The artist, the priest, the historian, the philosopher, in moments of discouragement, when they feel themselves assailed by the temptation to think only of a career or of money, may well find new strength in the idea that each of them is working in his different way to preserve an ideal of perfection in men’s souls—it may be a perfection of art or of morality, of the intellect or of the spirit. Let them remember that this ideal, limited as it may seem, serves as a dike to prevent our civilisation from being engulfed in an overwhelming flood of riches and from sinking in an orgy of brutality. ”

“ The greatest of the works of Rome, the Empire founded by her in Europe, including the immense territory bounded by the Rhine and the Danube, lay a vast ruin: a ruin of shattered monuments, of peoples relapsed into barbarism, of perished arts, of forgotten tongues, of laws thrown to the four winds, of roads, villages, cities razed from the face of the earth, swallowed up in the primeval forest which slowly and tenaciously thrust out its tentacles, in that cemetery of a past civilisation, and entwined the giant bones of Rome! ”

“ It is not possible to have been born in Italy, to have studied ancient civilisations, and to have examined at first hand the tendencies of modern civilisation in Europe and America, without being convinced that our epoch is allowing itself to be seduced by too material and gross a conception of progress. Progress cannot be merely the accumulation of wealth, accelerated by the inventions and great discoveries of science, nor the hurried transformation of everything, the perpetual change which is the mania of our epoch. ”

“ Is not progress for us first and foremost the continual increase of production? And what avails it to produce more, if the riches produced do not find consumers?
The modern world, in freeing men’s desires from all the ancient limits and restraints, has given a vigorous impulse to human industry. In order to satisfy the increased needs of the masses, man has invented machinery, and has put a premium on the new countries. But precisely because there is no longer limit or restraint to men’s desires, industry, which in the past was the handmaiden of human needs, is now becoming their tyrant. ”

“ The artistic mediocrity of our epoch is surpassed only by the superficiality and confusion of its tastes. Each succeeding year sees that which used to appear the height of elegance and beauty to its predecessors, despised, neglected, and forgotten. All the styles of the past and all the styles of the different countries swirl round us, before the fickle gusts of fashion. Every picture which excites admiration for a moment is quickly forgotten by the fickle taste of an age which ransacks every corner in search of the beautiful, because nowhere can the beautiful be found. ”

“ A civilisation cannot deck itself with the most exquisite beauties of art, if it cannot persuade itself to live with a certain simplicity and to work with a certain deliberation. What kills art in our civilisation is the mad desire for wealth, the giddy increase of necessities, the universal craze for speed, the effort to multiply production, the general restlessness of body and mind. Beauty is not so simple and commonplace a thing as to admit of its examples being multiplied by machinery in furious haste. ”

“ Never has man lived in such a state of permanent and growing excitement. If the men of the ancient world could come to life again, their first impression, you may be sure, would be that mankind had gone mad. It is this excitement which has produced the formidable explosion of energy that we are witnessing on our little planet, which for ages had lived in comparative tranquillity. But has not this formidable tension of the world-soul itself need of limits? Can we conceive its being allowed to increase indefinitely until the time when the nervous system breaks down as inevitably it must? ”

“ Modern civilisation has conquered with its railways, telegraphs, and steam-boats, the whole earth. In fifty years, it has succeeded in conquering continents so vast as North America. It has created riches so fabulous, in a word, it has achieved so much power, because it has broken through all the limits within which the spirit of tradition confined past generations. Escaping from these limits, it has learned to create at great speed. ”

“ Was the world then greater and man more powerful than the ancients had thought, and had the ancients been wrong in seeking to limit the efforts of human genius so strictly? Gradually, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the effort of the human spirit to free itself from the ancient limits continued, increased, and became bolder and more methodical. Subtle and ingenious philosophies delivered masked but clear attacks on the limits which marked the bounds of Good and Evil, Truth and Error; on tradition, on century-old institutions, on authority in all its forms. ”

“ In every epoch, those who have wished to introduce equilibrium into life have had to struggle against this mysterious force which drives men into every excess. But in no epoch and in no civilisation perhaps has this struggle been so difficult and wearisome as it is in contemporary civilisation. It is a phenomenon which few people nowadays take clearly and precisely into account; but which is, nevertheless, the keystone of the greatest difficulties by which our civilisation is beset. Yes, there is no doubt about it, we are living at an extraordinary crisis in history. ”

“ Everybody, from the aristocrat of ancient lineage to the most obscure peasant, wishes to earn, spend, and accumulate as much as he can. There is no power, human or divine, which can pretend to drive back towards its historical fountainhead this immense torrent of greed and ambition. Europe, thus, is fated to become increasingly oblivious of the traditions of its ancient and disinterested culture; to struggle to imitate and compete with America in the production of great riches at greater speed. ”

“ I tried to convince my friends that if so simple and material a notion of progress acquired a strong hold on the popular mind, the public would infallibly be impelled to create, not a lofty and noble civilisation, but a sort of opulent barbarism. In Brazil, as much as in Argentina, my arguments beat harmlessly against a faith and a passion which demands no proofs. “American Progress” for the Brazilians too was the great historical force of the future, which is going to create the new world, and the new civilisation whose dim foreshadowing seems to be agitating the masses at the present time. ”

“ On this point, it is impossible to feel any doubt; the power is wealth. These plains and these mountains which look so deserted are tilled, mined, worked with intensest energy; and every year, with a generosity which seems inexhaustible, they yield to the men who have toiled over them prodigious quantities of cereals, tobacco, coffee, wool, gold, silver, iron, oil—an enormous torrent of riches which pours over the entire world. The great industrial cities of North America manufacture these raw materials with profits so large and swiftly won that to the Old World they seem fantastic. ”

“ Riches may be the goal of an individual’s efforts; for a nation they can only be means to conquer the other good things of life which we call civilisation: glory, grandeur, power, beauty, knowledge, moral refinement. Can America, and will she, make use of her riches to rob Europe of the intellectual and moral leadership which the latter still possesses? Or will these riches, too swiftly won, exercise an evil influence simultaneously upon Europe and America, by making both continents more materialistic? ”

“ To decide, then, whether our times are or are not greater than those of the ancients, whether America is superior to Europe or Europe to America, we must discover which of these two definitions is the true one. But is it possible to prove that one of these definitions of progress is true and the other false? How many to-day would dare to deny that man made the world progress when, by the use of fire, he launched on the path of victory the locomotive across the earth and the steamer across the ocean? ”

“ This was the moment at which I was inclined to think that all the ideas of America and the optimistic spirit which animates them, beginning with the idea of progress, could only be a passing ebullition and the merry madness of youth. This nation, I said to myself, favoured as it is at the moment by unusual facilities for the creation of wealth, has been so much carried away by its success as to make of riches, which are and can be only a means, an end in themselves. A longer experience of history will convince America of its mistake. ”

“ If a contemporary of Sophocles or Horace came back to the world, he would probably just at first be terrified by what he saw all round him, as by the spectacle of a gigantic and unheard-of madness. Machinery, which to us seems the most marvellous instrument of our energy and intelligence, appeared to the ancients a danger, an enemy, and almost a sacrilege: an attempt to rebel against the gods and their wishes. ”

“ At a time when man is inventing increasingly powerful machinery, and is conquering the earth, the sea, the air, the vast treasures hidden in every nook and cranny of the universe; with these marvellous tools in his hand is recognising that he is becoming the wizard visioned in the legends of centuries; while the masses are clamouring for bread, victuals, education, ease, security, pleasures, air, light, liberty, all God’s blessings in prodigious and yearly-increasing quantities? ”

“ What philosopher is there who, as he pursues his transcendental preoccupation, does not feel himself sometimes hopelessly adrift, like a being fallen upon the earth, from another planet, in an age which no longer is passionately interested in anything except economic reality? What artist is there who seeks not only to make money, but to reach the perfection of his ideal, who has not cursed a thousand times this frenzied hurly-burly in the midst of which we live? ”

“ What is the reason for this startling paradox, of riches turning from a blessing into a torment? How comes it that America, which has shown such energy in the exploitation of the immense wealth hidden in her boundless territory, has not followed up her conquests by converting these riches to the benefit of the whole population? How is it that, in this fortunate country, it is these middle classes who suffer most who yet have an influence on the Government such as they have in no European country? ”

“ Having once transgressed the limits, man has become insatiable. The more he possesses, the more he wants. He no longer acknowledges any restraint in his desires.
The quantity which vanquishes quality, the liberty which vanquishes authority, the desires which blaze out anew each time they are satisfied—these are the forces and the phenomena which shape and fashion our civilisation. For this reason we can, it is true, accumulate vast hordes of wealth and conquer the earth with iron and fire. ”

“ Such was that old Europe which created the numberless masterpieces of architecture, sculpture, and painting, now so much admired by the Americans; that old Europe which discovered America, created science, and produced the French Revolution. But what remains of that old Europe? American progress is busy to-day destroying it; in particular, the artistic spirit is rapidly disappearing from the continent which for centuries was the world’s teacher of beauty. ”

“ The trial of Clodius had been a comedy, that of Verres a tragi-comedy, that of Piso was pure tragedy and terrible tragedy. For it was an episode in the gradual extermination of the old and glorious Roman nobility, which was being brought about by the new social forces which, during the years of peace, had grown up under the shadow of the imperial authority. How sad a spectacle are these trials which from time to time recur in history! The penal law ought to be the sacred instrument of justice, which punishes the wrong-doers, and defends and comforts the good citizens. ”

“ And amongst all the blessings which modern times shower upon us, perhaps the most precious—more precious than wealth, power, and knowledge—is liberty. If we have no reason to regret the past, it is chiefly because our forefathers lived,208 imprisoned, and in suffering, within limits which we have overstepped. Is there any greater joy for a man than that of being able in thought, feeling, and action to follow the inner impulse of his own conscience, instead of making it bend to an external will, whether it be that of the law, or that of the public, or that of a tradition? ”

“ In a word, Pragmatism, as America has conceived it, is a mighty effort to give the right of expression in modern civilisation to all religious and philosophical doctrines which in the past have stained the world with their sanguinary struggles.
A beautiful doctrine this, which may lend itself to many objections; but true or false, it proves that the people who have conceived it, far from despising the ideal, have such respect for all ideas and all beliefs, that they have not the courage to repel a single one. Such a people wishes to learn all and understand all. ”

“ Is it permissible to talk of decadence at the very moment when man has made himself lord of the whole earth, and is even learning to fly? History cannot show a richer, wiser, more powerful, more daring epoch than the present one. No wonder that most people would resent the suggestion that we, in the flush of our brilliant successes, are seeing the repetition of that ancient and terrible history of the last centuries of the Roman Empire, which was one of the saddest and deadliest episodes in the world’s history. ”