Essays and soliloquies

by Miguel de Unamuno

We Spaniards, so they say, are arbitrary charlatans, we fill up the broken links of logic with rhetoric, we subtilize skilfully but uselessly, we lack the sense of consecutiveness and induction, we have scholastic minds, we are casuists ... etc., etc.

I have heard similar things said of St. Augustine, the great African, the fiery soul that overflowed in waves of rhetoric, in phraseological contortions, in antitheses, in paradoxes and conceits. St. Augustine was at once a gongorist and a conceptist. Which leads me to believe that Gongorism and conceptism are the natural forms of passion and vehemence.

The great African, the great ancient African! Here you have an expression, “ancient African,” which can be opposed to that of “modern European,” and which is at least of equal value. St. Augustine was African and he was of the ancient world; so also was Tertullian. And why should we not say: “We must Africanize ourselves ancientwise” or “We must ancientize ourselves Africanwise”?

Luis de Gongora (1561-1627) elaborated an affected and euphuistic style of composition. Conception is the name given to the employment of conceptos, a characteristic Spanish form of conceits. It is exemplified in the writings of Quevedo (1580-1645) and its subtleties were reduced to an exact code by Baltasar Gracián in his Agudeza y arte de ingenio (1642).

Turning my glance inwards upon myself after the lapse of years, after having wandered among the various fields of modern European culture, I ask myself, face to face with my conscience: Am I European? am I modern? And my conscience replies: No, you are not European, not what is called European; no, you are not modern, not what is called modern. And I ask myself again: Is the fact that you feel that you are neither European nor modern due to the fact that you are a Spaniard? Are we Spaniards, at heart, irreducible to Europeanization and modernization? And if that be the case, is there no salvation for us? Is there no other life than modern and European life? Is there no other culture—or whatever you like to call it?

First of all, so far as I myself am concerned, I must confess that the more I reflect upon it, the more I become aware of the inner repugnance that my spirit feels for all those that are considered to be the guiding principles of the modern European spirit, for the scientific orthodoxy of to-day, for its methods, for its tendencies.

There are two things that are often talked about—science and life. And I must confess that both the one and the other are antipathetic to me.

It is unnecessary to define science, or Science, if you like, with the capital letter, this thing which is now being so widely popularized, the purpose of which is to give us a more logical and exact idea of the Universe. When I used to be something of a Spencerian I believed myself to be enamoured of science; but afterwards I discovered that this was a mistake. It was a mistake like the mistake of those who think that they are happy when they are not. (It is evident that I reject, arbitrarily of course, the idea that being happy consists in thinking that one is happy.) No, I was never enamoured of science, I always sought for something behind it. And when, endeavouring to get beyond its fatidical relativity, I was led to the ignorabimus position, I realized that science had always irked me.

And what are you going to put in its place? I shall be asked. I might say ignorance, but that is not certain. I might say, with the Preacher, the son of David, king of Jerusalem, that he who increases knowledge increases sorrow and that the same end awaits the wise man and the fool; but no, it is not that. I don’t need to invent a word, however, to express what it is that I oppose to science, for the word exists, and it is sabiduría—the sagesse of the French, the wisdom of the English, the German Weisheit or Klugheit. But is it opposed to science? I shall be asked. And I, following my arbitrary method, guided by the passion of my spirit, by my innate aversions and my innate attractions, reply: Yes, they are opposed; science robs men of wisdom and usually converts them into phantom beings loaded up with facts.