Ariel by Jose Enrique Rodo

Author:Jose Enrique Rodo [Rodó, José Enrique]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The clash between the democratic rule and the higher life becomes a fatal reality when that rule imparts the disregard of even legitimate superiorities and the substitution of mechanical government for a faith in heroism (in Carlyle’s sense). All in civilization that is more than material excellence, economic prosperity, is a height that will be levelled when moral authority is given to the average mind. Though there be no longer external invading hordes to hurl themselves upon the beacon lights of civilization with a might now devastating and now regenerating, the high culture of to-day should guard itself against the soft and gradual dissolvent work of those other crowds, pacific, even educated —the unescapable multitudes, of the vulgar, whose Attila might well be personified in “Mr. Homais,” whose heroism is shrewdness, ordered by an instinctive repugnance for what is great; whose device is the leveller. Immovable indifference and quantitative superiority are its attributes, the usual result of its labours; yet is it not entirely incapable of rising to epic heights, usually of anger, giving free reins to its antipathies. Charles Morice called it ‘‘those phalanxes of ferocious Prudhommes who have for their device Mediocrity, and march together in their hatred of all that is extraordinary.”

Elevated to power, these Prudhommes will make of their triumphant will an organized hunting-party against all that shows aptitude or daring wing to fly high. Its social formula will be a democracy which leads to the consecration of Pope Anyone, the coronation of King Average. They will hate merit as a rebellion. In their dominion all noble superiority will be like a marble statue placed in a miry road to be spattered by the mud of any passing waggon. They will call the dogmatism of common sense, wisdom; mean avidness of heart, gravity; adaptation to the mediocre, sound judgment; and bad taste, manly indifference to trifles. Their notion of justice will lead them either to substitute in history the immortality of great men by the common forgetfulness of all, or to preserve it with the equal memory of a Mithridates who knew the names of all his soldiers. Its manner of republicanism will resemble that of Fox, who used to submit his projects to the criterion of that member who seemed to him the most perfect type of the country gentleman, judging by the limitation of his faculties and the rudeness of his gestures. Then we shall be in that. Zoӧcracy that Baudelaire imagined, and Shakespeare’s Titania, kissing an ass’s head, will be the emblem of that liberty which calls but for the middling. Never could a tyrant’s conquest compass a more sinister end!

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