Selections from: Ortega y Gasset, José (1883-1955)

Life is at the start a chaos in which one is lost. The individual suspects this, but he is frightened at finding himself face to face with this terrible reality, and tries to cover it over with a curtain of fantasy, where everything is clear. It does not worry him that his ‘ideas’ are not true, he uses them as trenches for the defence of his existence, as scarecrows to frighten away reality. The man with the clear head is the man who frees himself from those fantastic ‘ideas’ and looks life in the face, realises that everything in it is problematic, and feels himself lost. As this is the simple truth—that to live is to feel oneself lost—he who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Man always aspires after more than his circumstances permit, hence he’s always, to a degree, unhappy. I believe only in ambiguity, because reality itself is that way. The modern paradox: an enormous progress in terms of culture should have produced...a man indisputably more barbarous than was the man of a hundred years ago.