Decadent movement

“ What change may come, no mortal man can tell, but that some great change must come, thoughtful men begin to feel. The civilized world is trembling on the verge of a great movement. Either it must be a leap upward, which will open the way to advances yet undreamed of, or it must be a plunge downward, which will carry us back towards barbarism. ”

“ Imagine this vast, vast throng of boys of a hundred races, this immense movement of which you form a part, and remember, if this movement were to cease, humanity would fall back into barbarism; this movement is the progress, the hope, the glory of the world. ”

“ Slowly but steadily, in the following years, a new vision began gradually to replace the dream of political power,—a powerful movement, the rise of another ideal to guide the unguided, another pillar of fire by night after a clouded day. ”

“ The processes by which and the period during which this accumulation of impulse is effected are by no means so spectacular as the events of the subsequent period when the revolutionary movement, having obtained an irresistible momentum, sweeps away like straws the obstacles that so long held it back only to swell its force and volume at last. ”

“ The social masses, the very assizes of civilization, the solid group of superposed and adhering interests, the century-old profiles of the ancient French formation, appear and disappear in them every instant, athwart the storm clouds of systems, of passions, and of theories. These appearances and disappearances have been designated as movement and resistance. At intervals, truth, that daylight of the human soul, can be descried shining there. ”

“ The mighty movement by which this development has been caused, has not slackened, but seems each day to gain new force; and the marvelous changes, political, social, moral, intellectual, and physical, which give character to the nineteenth century are but the prelude to a drama which shall make all past achievements of our race appear weak and contemptible. ”

“ But the old order of things, fortified in customs and prejudices and deeply-rooted institutions, does not surrender at the first blast of trumpets. The grand but fearful struggle of the reformatory movement plunges all Europe into endless confusion. The very wheel of progress seems to grind and crush one generation after another. ”

“ The institutions in which and by which society has lived and been strong in the past are slowly dissolving. Men call it progress, and if progress is movement and movement to an end, progress it is—but, to Nietzsche, progressive decline. ”

“ Here, as elsewhere, the unprogressive part of a movement which is essentially progressive is to be eliminated, not by decrying the whole movement but by giving it a wider sweep, making it more progressive, and leading it to demand an even greater change in the structure of society than any that it had contemplated in its inception. ”

“ Popular manifestations follow one after the other. The question assumes greater proportions, the movement becomes graved and more complicated, and in a short time the whole affair has changed its aspect. ”

“ All things move onwards. But the movement sometimes takes the form of a cataract, at others of an even and almost imperceptible current. This is really another way of saying that the usually slow and gradual course of change is, at certain stages, interrupted by a more or less prolonged period of revolution. ”

“ But the atrocious sufferings of an innocent man, and the ideological and political passions aroused, preserved for it, to the end, its serious character. It called into movement a whole world of ideas, passions, interests. ”

“ Such, for example, are the progress of ``statism,'' the diminution of the power of the bourgeoisie, the increasing activity of financiers, the conflict of the classes, the vanishing of the old social constraints, and the degradation of morality.
All these effects are displayed in a general insubordination and anarchy. The son revolts against the father, the employee against his patron, the soldier against his officers. Discontent, hatred, and envy reign throughout.
A social movement which continues is necessarily like a machine in movement which accelerates its motion. ”

“ And all this time, we are in an epoch of expansion; [72] and the essence of an epoch of expansion is a movement of ideas, and the one salvation of an epoch of expansion is a harmony of ideas. The very principle of the authority which we are seeking as a defence against anarchy is right reason, ideas, light. ”

“ Besides, every movement is a reaction, and generates counter-reactions. The pendulum swings backwards and forwards. Every institution not only carries within it the seeds of its own dissolution, but prepares the way for its most hated rival. ”

“ And they did in fact at that time create a very great and mighty movement; uniting with the ever-flowing stream in stirring up and violently shaking the courses of the soul, they completely stopped the revolution of the same by their opposing current, and hindered it from predominating and advancing ”

“ In the van of the movement were the moneyed men and the men of letters,—the wounded pride of wealth and the wounded pride of intellect. An immense multitude, made ignorant and cruel by oppression, was raging in the rear. ”

“ For in social development, as in everything else, motion tends to persist in straight lines and therefore, where there has been a previous advance, it is extremely difficult to recognize decline, even when it has fully commenced; there is an almost irresistible tendency to believe that the forward movement, which has been advance and is still going on, is still advance. The web of beliefs, customs, laws, institutions and habits, constantly being spun by each community and producing, in the individual environed by it, all the differences of national character, is never unravelled. ”

“ The successive revolutions which make the advance-guard of one movement the rear-guard of the next are as expeditious and as overwhelming in the field of art as in the fields of politics and sociology. ”

“ The seizure and consolidation of the estranged power of community, the State, has become the form of development of productive forces in conditions where earlier forms of Capital accumulation ceased to perform their historical task. Military, administrative and ideological activities—defense, organization, theory—become modern forms of revolutionary activity, archetypes of political engagement, synonyms of radicalism and movement. ”

“ To the outside world little is known of the beginnings and endings of social movements, which, taken separately, perhaps appear of small consequence, but which in the aggregate count for a great deal in what is popularly known as the forward movement. ”

“ Such a movement!—such a wealth of collective labour and individual genius thrown into it—producing offshoots and echoes throughout the world, transforming opinion with the slow inevitableness which belongs to all science, possessing already a great past and sure of a great future. ”

“ All our political theories and state constitutions, not by any means excepting “The German Empire,” are the logical consequences, the necessary consequences of decline; the unconscious effect of decadence has begun to dominate even the ideals of the various sciences. My objection to the whole of English and French sociology still continues to be this, that it knows only the decadent form of society from experience, and with perfectly childlike innocence takes the instincts of decline as the norm, [Pg 94] the standard, of sociological valuations. ”

“ He calls the enclosure movement "a revolution of the rich against the poor" and goes on to paint it in the most unflattering light. "The lords and nobles were upsetting the social order, breaking down ancient law and custom, sometimes by means of violence, often by pressure and intimidation. ”

“ But, just as little, does it seem open to question that, neither the writhings of the dregs of the populace in their misery, nor the speculative demonstrations of the Philosophers, would have come to much, except for the revolutionary movement which had been going on ever since the beginning of the century. ”

“ Directly and indirectly, by process of development and by process of reaction, an impulse was given which made it infinitely more effectual as a factor of civilisation than ever before, and a movement began in the world of minds which was deeper and more serious than the revival of ancient learning #55. The dispensation under which we live and labour consists first in the recoil from the negative spirit that rejected the law of growth, and partly in the endeavour to classify and adjust the Revolution, and to account for it by the natural working of historic causes. ”

“ And it must be admitted, that those who have determined always to follow behind the movement like a tail, are absolutely and forever ensured against "belittling the spontaneous element of development." ”

“ Had the movement had its roots in deep religious convictions, it would have survived the changes in social institutions, but, having been inspired and stimulated in its early development by economic motives, it lost its dynamic force with changed economic conditions by the end of the sixteenth century. ”

“ Those agitations and exertions which I have specified as characteristic of the earlier history are invariably similar in every land, wherever we can speak of a social movement. But on the very threshold, in the passage from antecedent to present history, the differences in the social movements begin to become apparent. Unity at the beginning; diversity as the movement develops. ”

“ From the contact of these vague and troubled impulses there springs forth the conscious and clear collective will. Certain impulsive forces particularly powerful disengage from others and unite with adjacent currents to create and to strengthen a movement that can attract the masses. ”

“ And even this generalization does not really cover what we regard as the facts of the case, because this backward or forward movement, though capable of being weighed and estimated "en masse" in the erratic and violent changes of history, is in reality a thing of particular and individual instances, a thing that ultimately affects nothing but individuals and personalities, in as much as it is the weighing and balancing of a struggle which takes place nowhere else except in the arena of concrete separate and personal souls. ”

“ It most certainly does not correspond to a movement of reaction, mystical, sensualist, individualistic, socialistic, anarchistic and even classic, as in Europe,—to a movement, in short, which is the result, on one side, of a revolt against the social organization, proved incapable of satisfying legitimate aspirations and needs of the individual, and on the other, of the exhaustion of Naturalism and Parnassianism. ”

“ In this movement some of the ultimate determinants of human destiny are emerging, yet the play of these profound forces is inconstant and erratic because at present they are almost as enigmatical to the men who trust as to those who challenge them. This movement combines with elements of promise all the elements of danger to which we referred above. ”

“ Then, however, a retrogressive movement is necessary; he must understand the historical justification as well as the psychological in such representations, he must recognise how the greatest advancement of humanity has come therefrom, and how, without such a retrocursive movement, we should have been robbed of the best products of hitherto existing mankind. ”

“ No great social movement can arise unless the grievance against the existing order is great and continuous, or the demand for a new order is so deeply ingrained in the minds of the people in the movement that they are willing to expend great effort and undergo great sacrifices in order to bring about the desired change. ”

“ In this opuscule he points out that modern society is passing through a great crisis, due to the conflict of two opposing movements,—the first, a disorganising movement owing to the break-up of old institutions and beliefs ”

“ And then to see a movement which had apparently been so successful, beyond all reasonable anticipations, at the decisive moment taken possession of by a combination of politicians striking and executing a bargain in the open light of day—and politicians, too, belonging to just that tribe we thought we were righting against—and the whole movement stripped of its higher moral character and dragged down to the level of an ordinary political operation ”

“ The movement must indeed {99} be judged by its ultimate object, which is the paralysis and subversion of the existing Government and by its inevitable result, general disorder and bloodshed and widespread misery amongst all classes and communities. ”

“ Leading.18—When we praise progress we only praise the movement and those who do not let us remain on the same spot, and in the circumstances this is certainly something, especially if we live among Egyptians. In changeable Europe, however, where movement is “understood,” to use their own expression, “as a matter of course”—alas, if we only understood something about it too!—I praise leaders and forerunners: that is to say, those who always leave themselves behind, and do not care in the least whether any one is following them or not. “Wherever I halt I find myself alone: why should I halt! ”

“ See how restricted our movement is by our own narrowness, lack of initiative, and hesitation and yet this is justified by the traditional argument about "finding it more interesting to gather around something more concrete!" ”

“ Though the contemporary world is quite unconscious of the fact, the movement has spread far beyond the circle of the Unions, of the resolutions, and of the personal activities of single individuals; it has grown into a struggle which involves the very conception of life and all natural laws. ”