History of Central America, Volume 1, 1501-1530 / The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 6

by Hubert Howe Bancroft

MEASUREMENTS OF CHARACTER.

The Spaniards we would know and judge. We shall judge them, even though we know them not. We love to judge our fellows, and to think how much better are we than they. Little attention we give it, though it is a self-evident proposition, that to judge a people by any other standard than that to which they have been taught to conform is to do them great injustice. If we may believe psychology, thought, in its higher phases, develops only with the development of language; the conceptions of the mind can not rise much higher than forms of speech will enable it to express. Apply this postulate to the measure of character, and the corollary is, that to interpret fairly, we must restrict our imagination to such ideas, our mind to such beliefs, and our tongue to such formulas as belong to those we judge. This, however, is no easy matter. In the present age of intellectual progress and changing activity, when old delusions are being rapidly dispelled by science, and new discoveries are constantly opening new channels to distinction, it is almost impossible to place ourselves within the narrow limits of mediæval restrictions, in which thought and opinion were not allowed to germinate, but were passed unchanged from one generation to another. "It often happens," as John Stuart Mill remarks, "that the universal belief of one age of mankind—a belief from which no one was, nor, without an extra effort of genius or courage, could at that time be, free—becomes so palpable an absurdity, that the only difficulty then is to imagine how such a thing can ever have appeared credible." Not only were the Church dogmas of the Middle Age accepted as truth, but at that time to hold opinions antagonistic to established creeds was seldom so much as deemed possible.

From the foregoing premises it clearly follows, that rightly to measure the character of those who carried European civilization into the wilds of America, we must, in so far as we may, divest ourselves of the present, and enter into the spirit of their times. We must fix in our minds the precise epoch in the history of human progress to which the discovery of this New World belongs. We must roll up four brilliant centuries of the scroll of science, cloud nine tenths of the world in obscurity, throw a spell upon the ocean; then wall the imagination within the confines of this narrow horizon and conceive the effect. We must know something, not alone of national polities and the attitude of kings, but we must enter the society of individuals, and study the impulses of the people. We must call up the inscrutable past, surround ourselves with those influences that give the stamp to character and the color to creed. We must familiarize ourselves with scenes familiar to the people we discuss; we must walk their streets, look through their eyes, think their thoughts; we must personate them and practically construe them. We should fill our breast with the aspirations that impelled them, our imagination with the fears that restrained them, and feel those subtle forces which for generations had been developing intellect and moulding opinion. We should dare even to gain access to their domestic and religious penetralia, to invade the sanctity of the hearth and altar, to sound the hidden chords of domestic life, to walk softly through vaulted aisles and convent corridors, bending the ear to catch the whisperings of the confessional; we should enter with the monk his cloister-cell, with the gallant the presence of his lady-love, and learn whence the significance and whither the tendency of their strange conceits. If, at the outset, with the political position, we also thus firmly grasp their inner social life, much that were otherwise enigmatical or suspicious appears in a clearer light; and we can then behold their chivalrous but cruel deeds with the same charity in which we hope posterity may shroud our own enormities. Thus only may we be led to understand the various processes by which this phase of civilization was evolved.

The configuration and climate of the Peninsula assist in giving variety to the character of its inhabitants. The interior is one vast table-land, higher than any other plateau in Europe, being from two to three thousand feet above the level of the sea. On either side precipitous mountain ranges interpose between the table-land and the shores, and through these numerous streams thread their way. The table-land is for the most part dry and treeless, hot in summer and cold in winter; Asturias is wet and wooded; the valleys of the Guadalquivir, Douro, Ebro, Tagus, and other rivers, are in places quite fertile. In the southern provinces of Andalusia and Murcia, autumn and winter are mild and pleasant, and spring is surpassingly lovely; but the solano which during summer blows from the heated plains of Africa is intolerable to any but the acclimated. From the snow-clad Pyrenees the piercing blasts of winter sweep over Leon, Castile, and Estremadura, at the north protracting the long winter and making cold and humid the spring, and arrive at the middle provinces stripped of their moisture, but not of their raw unwelcome chilliness.

During the eleven convulsive centuries preceding our epoch we have seen mix and agglutinate the several ingredients of Spanish character—Iberian, Celt, Phœnician; Roman, Goth, and Moor, all contributing their quota. Christian, Infidel, and Jew, with their loves and hates, season the mass; and thus society becomes an olla podrida, and Spain presents the anomalous race of the world.

In different provinces different race-elements preponderate, that of Rome tincturing the whole more strongly than any other. Under analysis these several social ingredients may be easily detected. By comparison with Strabo, Arnold traces many of the social characteristics of the Spaniards back to the Iberians. "The grave dress, the temperance and sobriety, the unyielding spirit, the extreme indolence, the perverseness in guerilla warfare, and the remarkable absence of the highest military qualities ascribed by the Greek and Roman writers," he affirms, "are all more or less characteristic of the Spaniards of modern times. The courtesy and gallantry of the Spaniard to women has also come down to him from his Iberian ancestors."

So in the volatile, dark-haired Celt, where reckless courage and indifference to human life reached their height, where quick perception and ready wit supplied the place of sober thought and logical deductions, where man was courageous and changeable, and woman was at once fickle, chaste, and passionate—in these fierce barbarians we see a multitude of traits handed by them to their descendants. Of Phœnician and Iberian influence, traces are seen in their skill in scientific mining; of Gothic, in their comparatively liberal forms of government, their attachment to military display, and in their good faith, integrity, and morality—would these latter had been a trifle more Gothic; of Roman, in their love of ecclesiastical forms, church and state loyalty, in their stately dignity and sobriety of deportment; of Arab, in their hatred of work, their love of freedom, their religious enthusiasm, their tactics in war, and in their language, poetry, art, and architecture. Some of these terms appear paradoxical, but human nature, in its ingredients, is ever paradoxical. In the Spanish language Brace discovers that the principal "terms for agriculture and science are Latin; for the Church, Latin or Greek; for arms, riding, and war, Teutonic; and for arts and plants in southern Spain, Arabic." From the north and east and south the boldest of the nations had congregated on this frontier peninsula, waiting the outburst which, after a thousand years of fermentation, broke over its western slope.

Buckle, in support of a theory referring the origin of character to physical causes, ascribes the superstition of Spain to famine and disease, to earthquakes and the awe-producing phenomena of wild scenery; their fickleness he attributes to climate, the heat and dryness in Spain interrupting labor and leading to desultory habits; their love of romance and adventure he traces to pastoral life, which prevailed to the neglect of agriculture during the Moorish invasion.

EVOLUTION OF THE SPANISH NATION.

The fall of Granada left the Peninsula occupied essentially as follows: In the north and west were the descendants of Goths and Celts who, unmolested by Roman or Moor, retained in a measure their ancestral characteristics. Low of stature, thick-set and awkward, as strong and as hairy almost as bears, the men of Asturias and Galicia, of Leon and Biscay, century after century come and go, living as their fathers lived, neither better nor worse, caring nothing for Arab or Dutchman, and little even for the Spanish kings; proud as ever of Pelayo, of the mountains that cradled Spanish liberty, of their great antiquity, which they boast as greater than that of any living nation; superstitious, irritable, and impetuous, but honest, frank, and sincere; implacable as enemies, but faithful as friends. Their boast is that never have they been subdued by Moor. Their chiefs were of the ancient Gothic blood, blue blood they called it, not being tainted with Arabic like that of their darker southern neighbors; of such material were early founded the kingdoms of Leon and Castile.