Travellers and psychologists find in modern Greece the craft of Ulysses, the rhetorical ability of the Athenian sophists, and the anarchy of the brilliant democracies once grouped about the blue Mediterranean. Though its purity has been tainted by the onset of Africa and the Turks, the old Hellenic spirit survives in the race. A similar vitality is to be observed in America. The transatlantic Creole is a Spaniard of the heroic period, enervated by miscegenation and climate. It is impossible to understand or explain his character unless we take into account the genius of Spain. The wars of independence gave the Latin New World political liberty, and a deceptive novelty of forms and institutions, but beneath these the spirit of race survives: the Republic reproduces the essential traits of the colonial empire. In the cities, despite the invasion of cosmopolitanism, the old life persists, silent and monotonous, flowing past the ancient landmarks. The same little anxieties trouble mankind, which no longer has the haughty moral rigidity of the old hidalgos. Belief, conversation, intolerance—all retain the imprint of the narrow mould imposed upon them by three centuries of the proudly exclusive spirit of Spain. To study the political and religious history of the last century in the American democracies is to add a chapter to the history of Iberian evolution. Beyond the ocean and the fabled columns which were overthrown by the pikes of the conquistadors is another Spain, tropical, and divided against itself, in which the grace of Andalusia has vanquished the austerity of Castile.[[1]]
If the troublous existence of the metropolitan state could be reduced to the simplicity of a formula, that formula would also explain the troublous history of a score of American republics, just as the deep root will reveal the germ of the vicious development of a tropical tree. But nothing would be more impossible than to reduce to an abstract and enforced unity the disturbed evolution of Spain, full as it is of anarchy and bloodshed. The Peninsula, divided into hostile regions, the refuge of inimical races, presents in its past such contradictions as defy synthesis. Amid this theocratic people the development of municipal liberties was premature. While feudality still imposed its authority upon the rest of Europe, Spain saw the rise of the free cities. Beside the eternal Quixotism which renounces the vulgar kingdom of the useful in order to give itself only to the ideal the wise refrains of the people express a dense, prosaic, positive realism. The Catholic nation par excellence furnished the Duke of Alba with the troops that were to conquer Rome. After long years of absolute monarchy the old democratic spirit was reborn in the Peninsular juntas which opposed the French invasion. From Cantabria to Cadiz we discover, beneath the unity of Castile, a splendid variety of provincial types. The Asturian hardness contrasts with the rhythm of Andalusia, the impetuosity of Estremadura with the dryness of Catalonia, the tenacity of the Basques with the proud idleness of the Castilian.
From this territorial complexity arises a turbulent life: the secular struggle in favour of national unity, the generous epic of the Catholic crusade against Islam, and the gloomy pursuit of religious unity by means of inquisitorial holocausts. European history is transformed south of the Pyrenees. Feudality is arrested; the crusade against the infidel lasts eight centuries; religion and empire are established in magnificence like that of the Oriental theocracies. In the wealth of this national development persist the racial characteristics which we wish to determine: individualism, democracy, the local spirit so inimical to great unities, and the African fanaticism which is satisfied only with excessive sensations and extreme solutions—in short, the heritage of a grave and heroic race, in a state of perpetual moral tension, proud in the face of God and king and fate.
Individualism is the fundamental note of the Spanish psychology. An Iberian characteristic, it has all the force of an imperious atavism. It exalts any form of action, of self-affirmation; it inspires an unreasonable confidence in self and the powers of self; it tends to develop human energy, to preserve the national independence from external pressure, to defend it against the rigour of the law, the moral imperative, and the rigidity of duty; and it creates in exalted spirits an ardent desire of domination.
Strabo observed among the primitive Iberians, who were divided into hostile tribes, an immense pride, inimical to union and discipline. In his life and attitude the Spaniard reveals all the outward and inward aspects of individualism. The austerity and arrogance revealed by the very folds of the hidalgo's mantle, by his majestic port, his sonorous speech, and his lordly gesture, the personal valour which turns history into an epic, the audacity, the love of adventure, and the isolation, are forms of personal exaltation. "The Spaniards, in their simplicity," says the squire Marcos de Obregon, "persuade themselves that they are the absolute masters of all."
Individualism explains the analogies between Iberian and English history: the civilisation of the Peninsula recalls, in some of its characteristics, that of the Anglo-Saxons. In both we find the premature affirmation of liberty, an excessive pride, and a long struggle against invasions. From this arises an aggressive imperialism: commercial in the north, religious in the south. In England the climate and the territory gave individualism a utilitarian bent; in Spain the conflict with Islam gave it a warlike tendency. Idealism, the inward life, and imaginative exaltation created the Puritans in England; in Spain the mystics and the inquisitors. But in the conquest of hostile circumstances the Saxon acquires a sense of realism; while the Iberian, under a fiery sun, becomes in Spain as in America a hunter of chimeras. A symbol will express the resemblance between the two histories: Ariel and Caliban, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza represent the same eternal dualism of idealism and realism. Caliban has given England a vast empire; the knight-errant has returned to his native La Mancha, exhausted by his barren adventure.
Spanish evolution, and the moral and religious aspects of Peninsular life, are to be explained by this perpetual exaltation of the individual. Stoicism is the moral aspect of individualism. It preaches virility (esto vir. says Seneca): it develops the human will as opposed to Destiny; it is a gospel of austerity in the face of suffering, of silent heroism in the face of death. Seneca is for Roman Spain the teacher of energy; from his teaching proceeds that tenacious faith in character which touches Peninsular history with a grave virility. Christianity, which proclaims human dignity, becomes the national religion south of the Pyrenees. According to the Stoics, all men are equal before Destiny; according to Christ, they are equal before God; and of these two doctrines a formidable pride is born. Finally, in mysticism, the original expression of the religious genius of Spain, there is nothing to recall the pantheism of the Orient, nor the annihilation of man before the Absolute. The Peninsular mystics exalt their individuality, draw strength from the visit of their Friend, become divine through ecstasy, and aspire with the ardour of conquerors to the possession of God. To the German Reformation, which preached predestination, the theologians of Spain opposed free human choice, the efficacy of action, and the dignity and merit of effort. The Spanish religion was by no means satisfied with speculation; it made for action and preached energy. The struggles of Spain have a religious significance; the heroes are mystics and the mystics "knights of the Divine order." Ignatius Loyola and Saint Teresa dream of heroic undertakings and read the romances of chivalry. Mysticism inspires the warriors; faith purifies the covetousness of the conquerors.
Wilful and mystical, the Spanish temperament is active, and expresses itself externally in conflict; it manifests itself in comedy and tragedy. The Peninsular genius is dramatic. Adventure, movement, and the shock of passions are developed in an ample theatre which expresses all the aspects of aggravated individualism. The struggle is not only for independence, but for fame, to preserve the integrity of honour in the general eye. Jealous and revengeful, this preoccupation in respect of honour, which is profoundly Spanish, inspires innumerable tragedies. Antagonisms, ruptures, theses, and antitheses abound in Iberian history; the positivism of Sancho Panza, the idealism of Don Quixote; obstinacy and idleness; sloth and violence; parasitism and adventure; gloom and solemnity such as we find in the paintings of Zurbaran and Ribera, together with the frivolity of harmonious dance and festival and light-headed madness in the hot sunlight; faith in the will and acceptation of destiny; the ardour of mystics and conquerors and the cynicism of rogues and beggars; heroic disinterestedness and passionate covetousness: these are the irreducible contradictions of the Spanish mind, which explain the long conflict, the intensity of the internal drama. On the stage we find the reflection of these conflicts, these indurated wills; subtle passions, grandiose pride, lofty character; tragedies with a touch of farce and comedies with a mystic background. The literature of Chivalry—the immense crop of romances, the rude primitive poetry, the Cid, the Children of Lara—is a commentary upon individualism and action. The great literary types—the hero, the adventurer, the mystic, the noble chieftain, the knight, the lover—are exalted individualities. The picaro himself belongs to this hardy family; he is proud as any knight, and a goodly number of knights are picaresque. Subtle and sceptical, the picaro employs both cunning and heroism in the daily struggle for life. Of "Gongorism," a school of Spanish literature, Martinez-Ruiz has written that it is the expression of movement in language, a dynamic poetry for men of action. Dramas and romances of energy, violent epics, with nothing of the antique serenity: these form the true literature of Spain.
In art and philosophy and literature there are really no schools, but writers, philosophers, and painters; such as El Greco, who left no imitators; solitary individuals such as Gratian and Quevedo. But in Spain we see the triumph of those military and political organisations in which the individual finds the greatest freedom: the people, the tribe, the guerilla band, the battalion. The cult of rebellious and exuberant energy is general. In the relations of king and subject the same Peninsular individualism appears.
"For besar mano de rey
No me tengo por honrado,
Porque la besó mi padre
Me tengo por afrentado."