The Spaniards have had everything except knowledge. They have had
immense wealth, and fertile and well-peopled territories in all parts
of the globe. Their own country, washed by the Atlantic and
Mediterranean, and possest of excellent harbors, is admirably situated
for the purposes of trade between Europe and America, being so placed
as to command the commerce of both hemispheres. They had, at a very
early period, ample municipal privileges; they had independent
parliaments; they had the right of choosing their own magistrates, and
managing their own cities. They have had rich and flourishing towns,
abundant manufactures, and skilful artizans, whose choice productions
could secure a ready sale in every market in the world. They have
cultivated the fine arts with eminent success; their noble and
exquisite paintings, and their magnificent churches being justly
ranked among the most wonderful efforts of the human hand. They speak
a beautiful, sonorous and flexible language, and their literature is
not unworthy of their language. Their soil yields treasures of every
kind. It overflows with wine and oil, and produces the choicest fruits
in an almost tropical exuberance. It contains the most valuable
minerals, in a profuse variety, unexampled in any other part of
Europe. Nowhere else do we find such rare and costly marbles, so
easily accessible, and in such close communication with the sea, where
they might safely be shipped, and sent to countries which required
them. As to the metals, there is hardly one which Spain does not
possess in large quantities. Her mines of silver and quicksilver are
well known. She abounds in copper, and her supply of lead is enormous.
Iron and coal, the two most useful of all the productions of the
inorganic world, are also abundant in that highly favored country.
Iron is said to exist in every part of Spain, and to be of the best
quality; while the coal mines of Asturias are described as
inexhaustible. In short, nature has been so prodigal of her bounty
that it has been observed with hardly an hyperbole that the Spanish
nation possesses within itself nearly every natural production which
can satisfy either the necessity or the curiosity of mankind.
[Footnote 54: From Volume II, Chapter VIII, of the "History of
Civilization in England."]
These are splendid gifts; it is for the historian to tell how they
have been used. Certainly, the people who possess them have never been
deficient in natural endowments. They have had their full share of
great statesmen, great kings, great magistrates, and great
legislators. They have had many able and vigorous rulers; and their
history is ennobled by the frequent appearance of courageous and
disinterested patriots, who have sacrificed their all that they might
help their country. The bravery of the people has never been disputed;
while, as to the upper classes, the punctilious honor of a Spanish
gentleman has passed into a byword, and circulated through the world.
Of the nation generally, the best observers pronounce them to be
high-minded, generous, truthful, full of integrity, warm and zealous
friends, affectionate in all private relations of life, frank,
charitable, and humane. Their sincerity in religious matters is
unquestionable; they are, moreover, eminently temperate and frugal.
Yet, all these great qualities have availed them nothing, and will
avail them nothing so long as they remain ignorant....
In Spain there never has been a revolution,[55] properly so called;
there never has even been one grand national rebellion. The people,
tho often lawless, are never free. Among them we find still preserved
that peculiar taint of barbarism which makes men prefer occasional
disobedience to systematic liberty. Certain feelings there are of our
common nature, which even their slavish loyalty can not eradicate, and
which, from time to time, urge them to resist injustice. Such
instincts are happily the inalienable lot of humanity, which we can
not forfeit, if we would, and which are too often the last resource
against the extravagances of tyranny. And this is all that Spain now
possesses. The Spaniards, however, resist, not because they are
Spaniards, but because they are men. Still, even while they resist,
they revere. While they will rise up against a vexatious impost, they
crouch before a system of which the impost is the smallest evil. They
smite the tax-gatherer, but fall prostrate at the feet of the
contemptible prince for whom the tax-gatherer plies his craft; they
will even revile the troublesome and importunate monk, or sometimes
they will scoff at the sleek and arrogant priest, while such is their
infatuation that they would risk their lives in defense of that cruel
Church which has inflicted on them hideous calamities, but to which
they still cling, as it it were the dearest object of their
affections.
[Footnote 55: It is here to be borne in mind that Buckle wrote long
before the revolutionary successes achieved by Castelar, Prim and
Serrano, and the overthrow and exile of Queen Isabella in 1868.]
Connected with these habits of mind, and in sooth forming part of
them, we find a reverence for antiquity, and an inordinate tenacity of
old opinion, old beliefs, and old habits, which remind us of those
tropical civilizations which formerly flourished. Such prejudices were
once universal, even in Europe; but they began to die out in the
sixteenth century, and are now, comparatively speaking, extinct,
except in Spain, where they have always been welcomed. In that
country, they retain their original force, and produce their natural
results. By encouraging the notion that all the truths most important
to know are already known, they repress those aspirations, and dull
that generous confidence in the future, without which nothing really
great can be achieved. A people who regard the past with too wistful
an eye will never bestir themselves to help the onward progress. They
will hardly believe that progress is possible. To them antiquity is
synonymous with wisdom, and every improvement is a dangerous
innovation.
In this state Europe lingered for many centuries; in this state Spain
still lingers. Hence the Spaniards are remarkable for an inertness, a
want of buoyancy, and an absence of hope, which, in our busy and
enterprising age, isolate them from the rest of the civilized world.
Believing that little can be done, they are in no hurry to do it.
Believing that the knowledge they have inherited is far greater than
any they can obtain, they wish to preserve their intellectual
possessions whole and unimpaired; inasmuch as the least alteration in
them might lessen their value. Content with what has been already
bequeathed, they are excluded from that great European movement,
which, first clearly perceptible in the sixteenth century, has ever
since been steadily advancing, unsettling old opinion, destroying old
follies, reforming and improving on every side, influencing even such
barbarous countries as Russia and Turkey, but leaving Spain unscathed.
While the human intellect has been making most prodigious and
unheard-of strides, while discoveries in every quarter are
simultaneously pressing upon us and coming in such rapid and
bewildering succession that the strongest sight, dazzled by the glare
of their splendor, is unable to contemplate them as a whole; while
other discoveries still more important, and still more remote from
ordinary experience, are manifestly approaching, and may be seen
looming in the distance whence they are now obscurely working on the
advanced thinkers who are nearest to them, filling their minds with
those ill-defined, restless, and almost uneasy feelings, which are the
invariable harbingers of future triumph; while the veil is being
rudely torn and nature, violated at all points, is forced to disclose
her secrets, and reveal her structure, her economy, and her laws to
the indomitable energy of man; while Europe is ringing with the noise
of intellectual achievements, with which even despotic governments
affect to sympathize, in order that they may divert them from their
natural course, and use them as new instruments whereby to oppress yet
more the liberties of the people; while, amidst this general din and
excitement, the public mind, swayed to and fro, is tossed and
agitated--Spain sleeps on, untroubled, unheeding, impassive, receiving
no impressions from the rest of the world, and making no impressions
upon it. There she lies at the further extremity of the Continent, a
huge and torpid mass, the sole representative now remaining of the
feelings and the knowledge of the middle ages, and, what is the worst
symptom of all, she is satisfied with her own condition. Tho she is
the most backward country in Europe, she believes herself to be the
foremost. She is proud of everything of which she should be ashamed.
She is proud of the antiquity of her opinion; proud of her orthodoxy;
proud of the strength of her faith; proud of her immeasurable and
childish credulity; proud of her unwillingness to amend either her
creed or her customs; proud of her hatred of heretics, and proud of
the undying vigilance with which she has baffled their efforts to
obtain a full and legal establishment on her soil.