Essays and soliloquies

by Miguel de Unamuno

Readers of Don Quixote will recall the encounter between the Knight of La Mancha and the barber who had clapped his brass basin on his head to keep his hat from being spoiled by the rain. Having routed his enemy, the Knight seized the basin, which he asserted to be the golden helmet of Mambrino, a famous Saracen (see Orlando Furioso, Canto I). When afterwards the barber met Don Quixote at an inn and claimed his basin, the dispute as to whether it was really a basin or a helmet was referred to the rest of the company, some of whom sided with the Knight and others with the barber.

Basin-helmet? Basin-helmet, Sancho? We must not do you the injustice to suppose that your calling it a basin-helmet was one of your sly jokes—no, it marks the progress of your faith. You were unable to pass from what your eyes assured you of, showing you the object in dispute in the likeness of a basin, to what faith in your master assured you, showing it to you in the likeness of a helmet, without catching at this compromise of a basin-helmet. In this respect there are many Sanchos like you and you have invented this notion that virtue consists in the via media. No, friend Sancho, no, there is no basin-helmet that is worth a straw. It is a helmet or it is a basin according to him who uses it, or rather it is basin and helmet at the same time for it serves both turns. Without the least addition or diminution it can and ought to be both helmet and basin, all of it helmet and all of it basin; but what it can never be nor ought to be, however much be added to it or taken away from it, is basin-helmet.

The barber to whom the basin belonged found the other barber, Master Nicolas, and Don Fernando and the curate and Cardenio and the judge more emphatic, for to the amazement of all the others who were present they insisted that it was a helmet. One of the four pursuivants, regarding this as a laborious joke, became annoyed and treated those who said it was a helmet as if they were drunk. Don Quixote called him a liar and hurled himself upon him; both sides prepared for battle and fell to blows. Then it was that Don Quixote, thinking that he was certainly involved in the disorder and confusion of King Agramant’s camp, lifted up his voice and quieted the tumult.

What! it surprises you that the question as to whether the basin was a basin or a helmet should have given rise to a general dispute? Other and more involved disputes have broken out in the world with regard to other basins and those not belonging to Mambrino. As to whether bread is bread and wine wine and the like. Human sheep flock round Knights of the Faith and maintain for various reasons or for no reason at all, that the basin is a helmet, as the Knights assert, and they are surprisingly rewarded for so maintaining it, and the strange thing is that most of those who contend that it is a helmet really believe it to be a basin. The heroism of Don Quixote communicated itself to his mockers, who became quixotized in spite of themselves, and Don Fernando made one of the pursuivants measure his length on the ground because he had dared to maintain that the basin was not a helmet but a basin. Heroical Don Fernando!

Thus we see Don Quixote’s mockers mocked by him, quixotized in their own despite, joining in the fray and fighting with all their might to defend the Faith of the Knight, although without sharing it. I am convinced—although Cervantes does not tell us so—I am convinced that the partisans of the Knight, the quixotists or helmetists, after having received and administered punishment, began themselves to doubt whether the basin were a basin and to believe that it really was the helmet of Mambrino, for their ribs bore evidence of their belief. It must be affirmed here yet again that it is martyrs who create faith rather than faith that creates martyrs.

In few of his adventures does Don Quixote appear greater than in this one, in which he imposes his faith upon those who mocked at it, so that they are led to defend it with kicks and blows and to suffer for it.

And what was it that inspired them to do so? Simply his courage in affirming before everybody that that basin, which he no less than they saw with his own eyes to be a basin, was the helmet of Mambrino, for to him it served the office of a helmet.

This is the courage of the purest water—that which resists not merely a shock to the reason or decay of fortune or loss of honour, but also being taken for a madman and an idiot.

This is the courage that we need in Spain and our soul remains paralysed because of the lack of it. It is because of the lack of it that we are neither powerful nor wealthy nor cultured; it is because of the lack of it that we have no system of irrigation, no good harvests; it is because of the lack of it that it doesn’t rain more on our drought-parched fields, or that when it does rain it rains in torrents, sweeping away the manure and sometimes sweeping away the houses too.

This seems to you like a paradox? Go into the country and propose to any farmer some improvement in his methods of cultivation or the introduction of a new kind of crop or of a new agricultural machine, and he will say: “That doesn’t pay here.” “Have you tried it?” you ask, and he simply repeats: “That doesn’t pay here.” He doesn’t know whether it pays or whether it doesn’t pay, for he hasn’t tried it and doesn’t mean to try it. He would try it if he were sure of its success beforehand, but the prospect of the possibility of a failure, with the consequent mockery and derision of his neighbours, the possibility of their taking him for a deluded fool or a lunatic, this prospect terrifies him and so he doesn’t experiment. And then people are surprised at the triumph of those who have the courage to face ridicule serenely, of those who rid themselves of the herd-instinct.