Essays and soliloquies

by Miguel de Unamuno

You know me, and you know how far I am from intentionally going in search of paradoxes, extravagances, and mannerisms—whatever some dull fools may think. You and I, my good friend, my only absolute friend, have often debated between ourselves as to what madness really is, and we have commented upon that saying of Ibsen’s Brand, the spiritual son of Kierkegaard, to the effect that the man who is mad is the man who is alone. And we have agreed that madness ceases to be madness when it becomes collective, when it is the madness of a whole people, of the whole human race perhaps. In so far as a hallucination becomes collective, becomes popular, becomes social, it ceases to be a hallucination and becomes a reality, something that is external to each one of those who share it. And you and I are agreed that the multitudes, the people, our Spanish people, must be inoculated with some madness or other, the madness of some one of its members who is mad—but really mad, not mad only in jest. Mad, and not foolish.

You and I, my good friend, have been scandalized at that which they call here fanaticism and which—to our shame be it said—is not fanaticism at all. No, nothing is fanaticism that is regulated and restrained and directed by bachelors, curates, barbers, canons and dukes; nothing is fanaticism that carries a banner inscribed with logical formulas, nothing that has a program, nothing that holds out for to-morrow merely a proposition that an orator can develop methodically in a speech.

Once—do you remember?—we saw a group of eight or ten youths and one of them said: “Let’s do something rash!” and the others followed him. And you and I long for the people to get together and shout: “Let’s do something rash!” and begin to march. And if any bachelor, any barber, any curate, any canon or any duke should stop them and say: “My children, that’s right! I see that you are bursting with heroism and righteous indignation. I also will go with you. But before we all go, and I along with you, to do this rash deed, don’t you think that we ought to agree as to the rashness that we are going to commit?”—if any of these mandarins should stop them and say that, then they ought to knock him down on the spot and walk over him, trampling on him, and that would be a beginning of the heroic rashness. Don’t you think, my friend, that there are many lonely souls amongst us whose heart craves for some rashness, something to set it aflame? Go then and see if you can’t gather them together and form them into a squadron and start us on the march—for I will go with them and march behind you—to redeem the sepulchre of Don Quixote, which lies, thank God, we know not where. The bright and sounding star will tell us.

But—you say in your hours of depression, when your spirit fails you—may it not be that when we think we are marching forward into new countries, we are really all the time revolving round the same spot? In that case the star will rest quietly over our heads and the sepulchre will be within us. And then the star will fall, but it will fall in order that it may bury itself in our souls. And our souls will be turned to light, and when they are all fused together in the bright and sounding star, the star will mount upwards, brighter still, and it will change into a sun, a sun of eternal melody, to lighten the sky of our redeemed country.

Forward then! And take care that no bachelors, barbers, curates, canons or dukes disguised as Sancho Panzas join the sacred squadron of crusaders. No matter if they ask you for islands; what you have got to do is to throw them out directly they ask to be informed of the itinerary of the march, directly they begin to talk about a program, directly they whisper to you and ask you, maliciously, to tell them the whereabouts of the sepulchre. Follow the star! And do like the Knight—redress the wrong that lies in front of you. Do now what is to be done now; do here what is to be done here.

Begin the march! Where are we going? The star answers: To the sepulchre! What are we going to do on the way, as we march? What? Fight! Fight, and how?

How? If you come across a man who is telling lies, shout out Liar! in his face, and forward! If you come across a man who is stealing, shout out Thief! and forward! If you come across a man who is talking fool-talk to a crowd listening with gaping mouths, shout out Idiots! and forward! Always forward!

“And is this the way,” a would-be crusader asks me, “that you propose to abolish lying and thieving and foolishness from the world?” Why not? The most pusillanimous of all pusillanimities, the most detestable and pestilent sophistry of cowardice, is that of saying that it is no use denouncing a thief because others will go on stealing, that nothing is gained by calling a fool a fool to his face, for this will not lessen the sum of foolishness in the world.

Yes, it has got to be repeated a thousand and one times—if you can finish once, only once, utterly and for ever, with only one liar, then you will have finished with lying for good and all.

March then! And throw out of the sacred squadron all those who begin to pay too much attention to the step that has to be kept on the march, to its time and rhythm. Above all, out with those who are always talking about rhythm. They will turn your squadron into a quadrille and the march into a dance. Out with them! Let them go and sing to the flesh somewhere else.