Lectures, Not Too Serious

TOWARD A PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY--Jose Orfega y Gassef--Norfon ($2.75).

When The Revolt of the Masses (1932) became an international bestseller, nobody was more surprised than its author, Jose Ortega y Gasset, a quiet professor of metaphysics at Madrid University. But this forecast, actually written three years before Hitler came to power, soon had the ring of prophecy: "Before long there will be heard throughout the planet a formidable cry, rising like the howling of innumerable dogs to the stars, asking for someone or something to take command, to impose an occupation, a duty."

There is nothing prophetic about Toward a Philosophy of History. Written mostly during Ortega's exile after the fall of Loyalist Spain, this book, like much of his writing, jumbles acute discernments about politics, society, people, side by side with kittenish comment, mental gymnasties, clever stories. The writing is spontaneous and good-natured, like the talk of a popular professor who feels superior to his class but does not take himself too seriously.

There are five essays in the book. The Sportive Origin of the State discovers, with more art than anthropology, the origins of the state in the rapistic longings of proto-Neanderthal youth. The timely essay on The Argentine State and the Argentinean sheds less light on the Argentine than on Ortega, who discovers that the Argentinean "is a Narcissus to the highest degree, being both Narcissus and the spring of Narcissus, and his image into the bargain." Now a refugee in Buenos Aires, Author Ortega regrets that "I know too little of the secret sphere of erotic relations in Argentina. ... Is the Argentinean a good lover?" He believes that the answer would "confirm or refute my diagnosis." Most important essay is Unity and Diversity of Europe. Ortega y Gasset says a loud No to a new order in Europe.

Europe, he says, has always been distinguished by its "diversity in homogeneity." "It is sheer madness to stake all Europe on one card, on a single type of man, on one identical 'situation.' Europe's secret talent up to the present day has been to avoid this, and it is the consciousness of this secret that has shaped the speech ... of the perpetual liberalism of Europe." In passing, Ortega y Gasset contributes to a minor but diverting branch of literature--anecdotes about inspired, rhetorical, self-important Novelist Victor Hugo. At his jubilee, Hugo was receiving the foreign representatives. To each he would murmur: "The English representative--ah, Shakespeare!" or "The Spanish representative--ah, Cervantes!" When the representative of Mesopotamia was announced, Hugo was stumped, since there have been no writers of note in Mesopotamia since the dawn of human history. But Hugo quickly recovered his poise. "Mesopotamia," he murmured to his guest,--ah, mankind!"

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