[On relativity]

From Vida e Morte de M. J. Gonzaga de Sá.
Lima Barreto.
Translation from Brazilian Portuguese language to English language by
Herculano de Lima Einloft Neto.
Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil, 2015.

[M. J. Gonzaga de Sá]
(...)
You must have noticed that the arithmetic resource of the average vassalized everything. It is a powerful and reasonable resource for certain aspects of our activity; but, perfectly inappropriate to give the sentimental feature of a class, of a people, or even translate its determinants of intelligence and character. By its own nature, the intelligence, the character, and the sentimental aspects, with supposing it society, are tyrannically individual. The genious is Rousseau, are not the swiss... You could say: in the average of Rio de Janeiro, per year, so many people are born, because it is treated there of numbers; but you would err grossly, if you said that in the average the cariocas are happy. The happiness, so volatile feeling, unstable, irreductible from man to man, is different thing, and does not consent average to encompass hundreds, thousands and millions of human beings. Imagine you that Mme. Belasman, of Petropolis, has a great bunion, a hideous defect, with which she exceedingly suffers; and the proletary Felismino, of Mortona, takes pride in possessing a son with talent. Mme. Belasman lives crushed with the exuberance of her bunion. She spent her childhood in suffering for it, the adolescence was to her an anguish; and so insignificant augment of her foot, in her conscience, is reflected lastingly, continuatedly, with the most incredible and terrorizing manifestations; meanwhile, Felismino, when he beats rivets, smiles and foretastes the roar that a parcel of his blood is going to cause in society. The fellows believe him insane, and already because once he has referred enthusiastically to the brilliant qualities of the son, has created for the latter, two or three enemies. It is consecrated! Who is happier -- I ask -- Mme. Belasman or the sr. Felismino? And, at the sight of this, can you say that all the ladies of Petropolis are happy and all the foundry proletaries are wretches? Is there average possible to the happiness of the classes? We, the modern, go forgetting ourselves that these histories of class, of people, of races, are types of cabinet, fabricated for the necessities of certain logical edifices, but that out of them disappear completely: -- Are they not? They don't exist. It is comprehended the 'sphere', the 'cube', the 'square', in geometry; but out of there, it is in vain wanting to obtain them. And in such way this mistake is agitating our opinion, that, it seems to me, is going to resurface the famous scholastic debate of the "universals". You know it, no?
(...)

Cf. The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide].
Cf. Houaiss, Avery, Barsa.
Cf. http://www.priberam.pt/dlpo/Default.aspx , norma brasileira.