Essays and soliloquies

by Miguel de Unamuno

Many times I have wished in my secret heart that I had lived in one of those ages of burning faith, among a people consumed by an infinite passion, among the Crusaders or among the Albigenses, in the ranks of Cromwell’s Ironsides or of Coligny’s Huguenots, or in the obscurity of the monastery in which Heinrich Seuss underwent his tremendous mortifications.... But who in God’s name, if he be a man and a real man, can stand one of those banquets with which the friends of the distinguished López celebrate the honour of his being appointed governor of a province, with their interminable toasts, all full of the same empty platitudes, pronounced to the hateful accompaniment of the popping of champagne corks? When the unavoidable exigencies of social servitude compel me to attend one of these ceremonies of homage, I feel a desire to get up and say: “Brothers, let us meditate upon death!” and launch forth into a sermon. I don’t do so, of course, though not for fear of ridicule, but because I know that it would avail nothing.

But enough of unbosoming myself. You needn’t be afraid, I know that I am a slave, I know that we are all slaves.... I will return to the beaten track, I will return to “objective” themes, but.... But must my heart never be allowed the relief of a sigh, a sigh at once of resignation and rebellion? Must I not be allowed some time to say that all this that you call civilization appears to me to be nothing but the trappings of culture and that those who are content merely with the trappings are savages muffled in royal robes, and that the splendour of your metropolises leaves me cold?

MY RELIGION

A friend writing to me from Chile tells me that he has met people acquainted with my writings who have asked him: “What, in a word, is the religion of this Señor Unamuno?” I myself have several times been asked a similar question. And I am going to see if I cannot—I will not say, answer it, for that is a thing I do not pretend to be able to do, but endeavour at any rate to elucidate the meaning of the question.

Individuals as well as peoples characterized by intellectual inertia—and intellectual inertia is quite compatible with great productive activity in the sphere of economics and in other kindred spheres—tend to dogmatism, whether they know it or not, whether they wish it or not, whether they intend it or not. Intellectual inertia shuns the critical or sceptical attitude.

I say sceptical, taking the word scepticism in its etymological and philosophical sense, for the sceptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found. The one is the man who studies a problem and the other is the man who gives us a formula, correct or incorrect, as the solution of it.

In the order of pure philosophical speculation it is premature to demand that an investigator shall produce a definite solution of a problem while he is engaged in defining the problem itself more exactly. When a long calculation does not work out correctly, it is no small step forward to rub it all out and begin afresh. When a house threatens to collapse or becomes completely uninhabitable, the first thing to do is to pull it down and not to demand that another shall be built on top of it. The new house may indeed be built with materials taken from the old one, but only after the old one has first been demolished. In the meantime, if there is no other house available, the people can find shelter in a hut or sleep in the open.

And it is necessary not to lose sight of the fact that in the problems of practical life we must seldom expect to find definite scientific solutions. Men live and always have lived upon hazardous hypotheses and explanations, and sometimes even without them. Men have not waited to agree as to whether or not the criminal was possessed of free will before punishing him, and a man does not pause before sneezing to reflect upon the possible injury that may be caused by the obstructing particle that provokes him to sneeze.

I think that those men are mistaken who assert that they would live evilly if they did not believe in the eternal pains of hell, and the mistake is all to their credit. If they ceased to believe in a sanction after death, they would not live worse, but they would look for some other ideal justification for their conduct. The good man is not good because he believes in a transcendental order, but rather he believes in it because he is good—a proposition which I am sure must appear obscure or involved to those inquirers who suffer from intellectual inertia.

I am asked, then: “What is your religion?” And I will reply: My religion is to seek truth in life and life in truth, even though knowing full well that I shall never find them so long as I live; my religion is to wrestle unceasingly and unwearyingly with mystery; my religion is to wrestle with God from nightfall until the breaking of the day, as Jacob is said to have wrestled with Him. I cannot accommodate myself to the doctrine of the Unknowable or to that of “thus far and no farther.” I reject the everlasting Ignorabimus. And at all hazards I seek to scale the unattainable.