Concerning the English Gentleman

From José Ortega y Gasset's “Man The Technician” concerning the English Gentleman

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But enough of digressions. We were bent on contrasting the two situations of man that ensue from his aspiration to be a gentleman or a bodhisattva. The difference is radical. It will become quite clear when we point out some characteristics of the gentleman. Concerning the gentleman we must first state that he is not the same as an aristocrat. No doubt, English aristocrats were the first to invent this mode of being, but they were actuated by those tendencies which have always distinguished the English noblemen from all other types of noblemen. While the others were hermetic as a class and likewise hermetic regarding the type of occupations they deigned to devote themselves to - war, politics, diplomacy, sport, agriculture on a large scale - since the sixteenth century the English aristocrat held his own in commerce, industry, and the liberal professions. As history from that time on has mainly consisted in activities of this sort he has been the only aristocrat to survive in full social efficiency. This made it possible for England to create in the beginning of the nineteenth century a prototype of existence which was to become exemplary throughout the world. Members of the middle class and the working class can, to a certain degree, be gentlemen. Nay more, whatever happens in a future which, alas, may be imminent there will remain as one of the miracles of history the fact that today even the humblest English workman is in his sphere a gentleman. Gentlemanliness does not imply nobility. The continental aristocrat of the last four centuries is, primarily, an heir-a man who has large means of living at his command without having had to earn them. The gentleman as such is not an heir. On the contrary, the supposition is that a man has to earn his living and to have an occupation, preferably a practical one-the gentleman is no intellectual-and it is precisely in his profession that he has to behave as a gentleman. Antipodes of the gentleman are the gentilhomme of Versailles and the Prussian Junker.

VII THE GENTLEMAN TYPE-ITS TECHNICAL
REQUIREMENTS-THE GENTLEMAN
AND THE HIDALGO

But what does it mean to be a gentleman? Let us take a short cut and, exaggerating things, put it this way: a gentleman is a man who displays throughout his life, i. e., in every situation however serious or unpleasant, a type of behaviour which customarily remains restricted to those brief moments when the pressures and responsibilities of life are shuffled off and man indulges in the diversion of a game. This again shows strikingly to what degree the human program of life can be extra-natural. For games and their rules are sheer invention in comparison with life as it comes from nature's own hands. The gentleman ideal inverts the terms within human life itself, proposing that a man should behave in his enforced existence of struggle with his environment as though he moved in the unreal and purely imaginative orbit of his games and sports.

When people are in the mood to play we may assume that they feel comparatively safe regarding the elemental needs of life. Games are a luxury not to be indulged in before the lower zones of existence are well taken care of, and an abundance of means guarantees a life within an ample margin of serene tranquillity, unharassed by the stress and strain of penury which converts everything into a frightening problem. In this state of mind man delights in his own magnanimity and gratifies himself with playing fair. He will defend his cause but without ceasing to respect the other fellow's rights. He will not cheat, for cheating means to give up the attitude of play: it is "not cricket." The game, it is true, is an effort, but an effort which is at rest in itself, free from the uneasiness that hovers about every kind of compulsory work because such work must be accomplished at all costs.

This explains the manners of the gentleman, his sense of justice, his veracity, his perfect self-control based on previous control of his surroundings, his clear awareness of his personal claims on others and theirs on him, viz., his duties. He would not think of using trickery. What is done must be done well, and that is all there is to it. English industrial products are known to be good and solid both in raw material and in workmanship. They are not made to be sold at any price. They are the opposite of trash. The English manufacturer has never condescended to conform to the taste and caprices of his customer as has the German. On the contrary, he calmly expects his customer to conform to his products. He does but little advertising which is always deceit, rhetoric, foul play. And the same in politics. No phrases, no farces, no demagogic inveiglement, no intolerance, but few laws; for the law, once it is written, turns into a reign of pure words which, since words cannot be fulfilled to the letter, necessarily results in falsification of the law and governmental dishonesty. A nation of gentlemen needs no constitution. Therefore England has fared very well without it. And so forth.

The gentleman, in contrast to the bodhisattva, wants to live intensely in this world and to be as much of an individual as he possibly can, centred in himself and filled with a sense of independence of everything else. In Paradise, where existence itself is a delightful game, the gentleman would be incongruous, the gentleman's concern being precisely to remain a good sport in the thick of rude reality. The principal element, the atmosphere, as it were, of the gentlemanly existence is a basic feeling of leisure derived from an ample control over the world. In stifling surroundings one cannot hope to breed gentlemen. This type of man, bent on converting existence into a game and a sport, is therefore very far from being an illusionist. He acts as he does just because he knows life to be hard, serious, and difficult. And just because he knows this he is anxious to secure control over circumstance-matter and man. That is how the British grew to be great engineers and great politicians.

The desire of the gentleman to be an individual and to give to his mundane destiny the grace of a game made it necessary for him to live remote from people and things, even physically, and to ennoble the humblest functions of his body by attending to them with elaborate care. The details of personal cleanliness, the ceremony of dressing for dinner, the daily bath-after Roman times there were hardly any private baths in the Western world-are punctiliously observed. I apologize for mentioning that England gave us the w.c. A dyed-in-the-wool intellectual would never have thought of inventing it, for he despises his body. But the gentleman, as we have said, is no intellectual; and so he is concerned about decorum: clean body, clean soul.

All this, of course, is based on wealth. The gentleman ideal both presupposed and produced large fortunes. Its virtues cannot unfold without an ample margin of economic power. As a matter of fact, the gentleman type reached its perfection only in the middle of the last century when England had become fabulously rich. The English worker can, in his way, be a gentleman because he earns more than the average member of the middle class in other countries.

It would be of no small interest if someone with a good mind and a long intimate knowledge of the English situation were to study the present state of the system of vital norms which we have called the gentleman ideal. During the last twenty years economic circumstances in England have changed. She is much less rich than in the beginning of this century. Can one be poor and still be English? Can the characteristic English virtues survive in an atmosphere of scarcity?

Be that as it may, it is not unfitting to think of an exemplary type of life that preserves the best qualities of the gentleman and yet is compatible with the impoverishment that inexorably threatens our planet. If we try to visualize this new figure, there will inevitably rise before our mind's eye as a term of comparison another human profile evolved in history, which in some of its features bears close resemblance to the portrait of the gentleman while differing from it in one respect: it thrives on the soil of poverty. I mean the Spanish hidalgo. In contrast to the gentleman the hidalgo does not work. He reduces his material necessities to a minimum and consequently has no use for technology. He lives in poverty, it is true, like those plants of the desert which have learned to grow without moisture. But it is also beyond question that he knows how to lend dignity to his wretched conditions. Dignity makes him the equal of his more fortunate brother, the gentleman.