Concept of history

I speak from the Center for Historical Studies and I want to take advantage of this moment and place in which I find myself to express my enthusiasm and my faith in History.

History is today for Europe the first condition for its possible reorganization and resurgence because each one can only have their own virtues and not those of others.

Europe is old. He cannot have, he cannot aspire to have the virtues of the young. Its virtue is being old, that is, having a long memory, a long history. The problems of his life are at heights of complication that also require very complicated solutions and these can only be provided by History, otherwise there would be an anachronism between the complexity of his problems and the youthful and memoryless simplicity that he would like to give to his solutions. . Europe has to learn from history not finding in it a norm of what it can do, history does not foresee the future, but rather has to learn to avoid what should not be done. Therefore, it must always be reborn of itself, avoiding the past. This is what History serves us for, to liberate us from what was. Because the past is a revenant and if it is not mastered with memory, refreshing it, it always comes back against us and ends up strangling us.

This is my faith, this is my enthusiasm for History, and I am deeply pleased, and it has always been a great Spanish fervor for me to see that in this place attention is condensed on the past, the past is passed over, which is the way to make it fruitful, like passing over the old earth with the plow, and wounding it with the furrow makes it bear fruit.

Text read by Ortega y Gasset for the "Archive of the Word" collection, at the Center for Historical Studies in Madrid (1931-1933).