User:Heaven in a Wildflower/The Mediocre Man

The Mediocre Man (Spanish: El hombre mediocre) is a book by Italian-Argentinian doctor and sociologist José Ingenieros. It was published in 1913. Its subject is the nature of man, which it explores by opposing two kinds of personalities: that of the mediocre man, and that of the idealist, analysing the moral characteristics of each one, and the forms and roles that these types of people have adopted throughout history, society, and culture.

The types of men
José Ingenieros claims that "there are no equal men," and divides them between three types: the inferior man, the mediocre man, and the idealist. He does not condemn the first two, but describes all three types and exalts the idealist.

The mediocre man
The mediocre man is incapable of using his imagination to conceive of ideals that will inspire a future worth fighting for. Because of this, he becomes subordinated to routine, to prejudice and domesticity, becoming part of a herd or collectivity, whose actions or motives he does not question but follows blindly. The mediocre man is docile, malleable, ignorant, a vegetative being, lacking in personality, contrary to perfection, caring and an accomplice of the interests that make him a sheep in the social herd. In his accommodating life, he becomes vile and skeptical, a coward. Mediocre men aren't geniuses, and neither are they heroes or saints.

A mediocre man doesn't accept ideas that are different from those that tradition has handed down to him (highlighting then-popular positivist ideas of man as a receiver and continuation of his biological inheritance), not realising that beliefs are relative to the person that holds them, and that it is entirely possible for others to hold ideas that are completely contrary to theirs. Furthermore, the mediocre man enters a conflict with the idealist. Because he is envious, he tries in desperation to overshadow every noble act. He knows that his existence depends on the idealist never being recognised, and never being put in a higher position than he.

The inferior man
The inferior man is an unscrupulous animal. His inability to imitate prevents him from adapting to his social environment; his personality does not develop to a normal level, living beneath morality or beneath the dominant culture, and in many cases, outside legality. This insufficient adaptation determines his incapacity to think like others, and to share routines that are common to everybody else. He copies the people that surround him in order to create an adapted social personality.

The idealist
The idealist is capable of using his imagination to create ideals legitimated only by experience, and proposes to follow very high ideals of perfection. He puts his faith in these ideals to change the past in favour of the future to come. That is why he is in continuous process of transformation, which adjusts to variations in his reality. The idealist contributes to social evolution through his ideals, by being original unique; he is an individualist who does not submit to moral nor social dogma. Consequently, mediocre oppose him. The idealist is dreamy, enthusiastic, cultivated, of distinct personality, generous, indisciplined against dogmatists. As a person that is kin to quality, he distinguishes between what is better or worse, rather than to what is greater or lesser, as would the mediocre man.

Influences
The Mediocre Man had a significant influence on the Argentinian youth of its time, and especially the Argentine university reform started in 1918.

Some of its categories were borrowed and reformulated two decades later by the Spaniard José Ortega y Gasse t to design his opposition between the mass-man and the noble-man, as published in his 1929 book The Revolt of the Masses.

Translations
Translated to Esperanto by Enio Hugo Garrote (La triviala homo). Edición La Juna Penso, 1976.