In few books have I found so much food for reflection upon our Spain
and us Spaniards as in Martin A. S. Hume’s “The Spanish People:
Their Origin, Growth and Influence.” It is written by one who knows
and esteems us. It impresses us at a first glance as an excellent
compendium of the history of Spain, but on closer examination it is
found to be also an excellent psychological study of the Spanish people.
In the tenth chapter there is to be noted a very happy and graphic
phrase--“the introspective individuality of Spaniards.” And it is
indeed true that we are much given to this direct contemplation of
ourselves, a practice which is certainly not the best method of getting
to know ourselves, of fulfilling the precept “Know thyself” in its
collective and social sense. Introspection is very deceptive and when
carried to an extreme produces an actual vacuity of consciousness,
like that into which the Yogi falls through perpetual contemplation
of his own navel. For a state of consciousness which consisted purely
and simply of consciousness contemplating itself would not be a state
of consciousness at all, being void of all content. This supposed
reflection of the soul upon its own self is an absurdity. To think that
one thinks without thinking of anything concrete is mere negation. We
learn to know ourselves in the same way that we learn to know others,
by observing our actions, and the only difference is that, as we are
always with ourselves and scarcely anything that we consciously do
escapes us, we have more data for knowing ourselves than we have for
knowing others. But even so, we seldom know all that we are capable
of until we put ourselves to it, and often we surprise ourselves by
achieving something which we did not expect of ourselves.
Hence the utility of a people knowing its own history in order that it
may know itself. And Hume studies us in our history.
In one of his books the American humorist, Oliver Wendell Holmes,
speaks of the three Johns: the John as he himself thinks he is, the
John as others think he is, and the John as he is in reality. And as
for every individual, so for every people there are three Johns. There
is the Spanish people as we Spaniards believe it to be, there is the
Spanish people as foreigners believe it to be, and there is the Spanish
people as it really is. It is difficult to say which of the first two
approximates most nearly to the last; but it is certainly right that
we should compare them together and see ourselves both from within
and from without. However much we may lament the injustice or the
superficiality of the judgments that our foreign visitors pronounce
upon us, it is possible that we are no less unjust or superficial in
our own judgment of ourselves.
Havelock Ellis, in a book published not long ago, “The Soul of Spain,”
spoke of the unity of our race. Spaniards have generally regarded
this view as absurd, but it may very well be that the differences
that separate the inhabitants of the various provinces of Spain
are no greater than those which exist between the inhabitants of
the different districts of other nations which we suppose to be
more unified than ourselves, and that our lack of solidarity, our
separatist instinct, our _kabylism_, as it is called, proceeds from
other causes than from differences of race. Little notice need be taken
of certain ethnological assertions, not so much based upon scientific
investigation as inspired by sentiments which, whether creditable or
not, furnish no basis for arriving at the truth. Thus, if a writer
asserts that the Catalans are Aryans and all other Spaniards Semites,
it is obvious that he is using the terms Aryan and Semite without a
proper understanding of them; and as the distinction between Catalans
and other Spaniards is one of philology rather than ethnology, it
would be interesting to know what language the ancestors of the
present Catalans spoke before Latin penetrated into Cataluña, for
the supposition that they are descended from Greek colonists is too
nonsensical to be taken seriously.
* * * * *
Before proceeding further in this review of Hume’s study of the
psychology of the Spanish people, I should like to indicate a
distinction which I am in the habit of making between individuality
and personality, a distinction which appears to me to be of great
importance.
All my readers know what is meant by “individual” or “indivisible,”
a unity that is distinct from other unities and not divisible into
unities analogous to it; and also what is meant by a person. The
notion of person refers rather to the spiritual content, and that of
individual to the containing limit. Great individuality, that which
separates an individual strongly and emphatically from other analogous
individuals, may have very little that is peculiar and personal to
itself. It might even be said that individuality and personality are
in a certain sense opposed to one another, although in another wider
and more exact sense it may be said that they afford one another
mutual support. Strong individuality is scarcely possible without
a respectable dose of personality, neither is a strong and rich
personality possible without a considerable degree of individuality
to hold its various elements together; but the vigour of a vigorous
individuality may very easily contain only the minimum of personality
and the richness of a rich personality may be contained within the
minimum of individuality.
I will endeavour, as is my wont, to make my meaning clearer by means of
metaphors.
In gases, according to the physicists, the molecules are in a certain
state of disassociation, moving rectilinearly in all directions--it
is this which produces the phenomena of expansion--a state that is
chaotic but not in reality very complex; and it is a well-known fact
that very complex bodies are not as a rule found in a gaseous state,
but only those that are simplest and least complicated. In solids,
on the other hand, the molecules are ordered according to relatively
fixed orbits and trajectories--especially in the case of crystals; and
their individuality is maintained by a principle of intense cohesion,
their surfaces being in direct contact with their environment, capable
of affecting it and being affected by it. A middle term is presented
by liquids. And thus we may compare certain strongly individualized
natures with gases enclosed in a bottle or shell with rigid sides,
while there are others, with flexible contours, in a free give-and-take
contact with their environment, which possess great internal
complexity--in other words, a high degree of personality.
Or we may compare the former with crustaceans, enclosed in hard
shells which give them rigid and permanent forms, and the latter with
vertebrates, which, since they carry their skeleton within themselves,
are capable of considerable external modification.
Individuality refers rather to our external limits, it exhibits our
finiteness; personality refers principally to our internal limits, or
rather to our inward unlimitedness, it exhibits our infinitude.
All this is somewhat tenuous and perhaps fails to meet the demands of
strict psychology, but it is enough if it has helped to make my meaning
clearer.
My idea is that the Spaniard possesses, as a general rule, more
individuality than personality; that the vigour with which he affirms
himself before others and the energy with which he creates dogmas
and locks himself up in them, do not correspond with any richness of
inward spiritual content, which in his case rarely errs on the side of
complexity.
* * * * *
In his preface Hume states that the Spaniards spring from an
Afro-Semitic race, that “the keynote of this primitive racial
character is overwhelming individuality,” and that to this root-cause
is to be attributed all that we have accomplished in the world, our
transient imperial greatness and our permanent tenacity. This feeling
of individuality lies deep down in the root of the race and cunning
politicians have turned it to the advantage of their ambitions.
In speaking of the Arab domination he says that “the Berber, like his
far-away relative the Iberian, was a man of strong individuality, with
an obstinate reluctance to obey another unless he spoke in the name of
a supernatural entity.”
At the conclusion of the ninth chapter in which he treats of our epoch
of greatness in the middle of the 16th century, he writes the following
notable lines:
“Each unlettered boor and swaggering soldier felt in an undefined
way that he was a creature apart by reason of his faith; that
Spaniards and the Spaniards’ king had a higher mission than was
accorded to other men; and that from among the eight million
Spaniards alive the particular Juan or Pedro in question stood out
individually, in the sight of God and men, as pre-eminently the
most zealous and orthodox of them all. To this had the policy of
Fernando and Isabel brought the mass of the Spanish people.”
And in corroboration of this he draws a striking portrait of Philip II,
the idol of our traditionalists:
“Intense individuality in him, as in so many of his countrymen,
was merged in the idea of personal distinction in the eyes of God
by self-sacrifice.... At heart he was kindly, a good father and
husband, an indulgent and considerate master, having no love for
cruelty itself. And yet lying, dishonesty, cruelty, the infliction
of suffering and death upon hosts of helpless ones, and the secret
murder of those who stood in his path, were not wrong for _him_,
because, in his moral obliquity he thought that the ends justified
the means, and that all was lawful in the linked causes of God and
Spain.” “He was blind and oblivious to all but the blood-boltered
Christ, before whom he writhed in a maniacal agony of devotion,
sure in his dark soul, as were so many of his countrymen, that
the divine finger pointed from glory alone upon him as the one
chosen man who was to enforce upon earth the rule of the Most
High, with--as a necessary consequence--Philip of Spain as his
viceregent.”
I know that many who look upon this portrait will come forward with
the familiar objection that this Philip II is the Devil of the South
of the Protestant legend, and will advance the counter-legend--equally
legendary--which is being built up out of a mass of minute data by
historians who combine the method of Dr. Dryasdust with the spirit of
rabid partisanship.
What interests me in Hume’s description is his statement that every
Spaniard regards himself as an individual apart, specially and
personally chosen by God. This recalls Pascal’s claim that Jesus Christ
in dying shed a drop of blood for him, Blaise Pascal, who was destined
to live in France in the middle of the 17th century. There is a certain
characteristic common to all those whom we call geniuses or great men
and other heroes. Each of them has a consciousness of being a man
apart, chosen very expressly by God for the performance of a certain
work.
In this respect we Spaniards are inclined to think ourselves geniuses,
or rather we have a very robust conception of the Divinity--we think of
Him not as the frigid and exalted God of the French Deism of the 18th
century, nor yet as the good-natured and easy-going God of good people
that Béranger depicts, but rather as a God whose attention and care
extends to the very last ant, regarded as a separate individual, as
well as to the very greatest and most splendid of suns.
In actual fact all these claims to singularity and to being one
apart from the rest may become reprehensible, but it is at least
understandable that an orator, for example, or a writer, or a singer,
should regard himself as the best orator, the best writer, or the
best singer. What is not understandable is that a man who is neither
orator, writer, painter, sculptor, musician, nor man of business, that
a man who does nothing at all, should expect by the mere fact of his
presence to be reputed a man of extraordinary merit and exceptional
talent. And nevertheless here in Spain--I do not know how it may be
elsewhere--there are many examples of this curious phenomenon.
I know of the man who is ready to admit that others may be handsomer,
smarter, stronger, healthier, wiser, more intelligent, more generous,
than he, that in each and all of their endowments they have the
advantage over him; but nevertheless he, Juan Lopez, the individual in
question, is superior to everyone else just because he is Juan Lopez,
because there is no other Juan Lopez exactly like him and because it is
impossible that all the qualities, good, bad and indifferent, that make
him him, Juan Lopez, should ever be assembled together again. He is a
unique individual, he cannot be substituted by anyone else--and he is
in a measure right in thinking so. He can say with _Obermann_: “In the
universe I am nothing; for myself I am everything.”
This violent individualism, combined with very meagre personalism, with
a great lack of personality, is a factor that explains a great deal of
our history. It explains that intense thirst for individual immortality
which consumes the Spaniard, a thirst that lies hidden beneath what is
called our cult of death. Homage to this cult of death is rendered no
less by the most furious lovers of life, by those in whom the joy of
living is unable to extinguish the hunger for survival. It appears to
me a very great error to assert that the Spaniard does not love life
because he finds life hard. On the contrary, it is because his life is
hard that he has not arrived at the _tædium vitæ_, the _Weltschmerz_
of the satiated, and that he has always aimed at prolonging it
indefinitely beyond death.
In the third part of the “Ethics” of Spinoza, a Jew of Spanish
origin--or Portuguese, which amounts to the same thing--there are
four admirable propositions, the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth, in
which he lays it down that everything, in so far as it is in itself,
endeavours to persist in its own being; that the endeavour wherewith
a thing endeavours to persist in its being is nothing else than the
actual essence of that thing (_conatus, quo unaquæque res in suo esse
perseverare conatur, nihil est præter ipsius rei actualem essentiam_);
that this effort or endeavour involves no finite time but an indefinite
time, and that the spirit endeavours to persist in its being for an
indefinite period and is conscious of this its endeavour. It is not
possible to express with more precision the longing for immortality
that consumes the soul.
This strong individualism, the individualism of an individual who
endeavours to persist, has led the Spaniard to follow always the
path of conduct and will, and this is the reason of Schopenhauer’s
admiration of Spaniards, whom he deemed to be one of the peoples most
fully possessed of will--or rather of wilfulness--most tenacious of
life. Our indifference to life is only on the surface and really
conceals a most dogged attachment to it. And this practical tendency
is manifest in our thought, which ever since Seneca has inclined to
what is called moralism and has evinced but little interest in pure
metaphysical and speculative contemplation, in viewing the world as a
spectator.
It is this imperious individualism that has led us to the dogmatism
that corrodes us. Spain is the country of those who are more
papistical than the Pope, as the saying is. Spain is the chosen and
most propitious soil for what is called _integrism_, which is the
triumph of the maximum of individuality compatible with the minimum
of personality. Spain was, in short, and in more than one respect
continues to be, the land of the Inquisition.
Of the Inquisition and inquisitorialism, Hume writes very aptly.
“Innate cruelty, individual pride, a vivid imagination long fed with
extravagant fables, religious and secular, and lust for unearned
wealth, all combined under the eager blessings of the Queen [Isabel]
and the Church to make the Spaniards, as a race, relentless persecutors
of those who dared to think differently from themselves.” Beneath the
manifest and not inconsiderable exaggeration, there is here a large
basis of truth. Spaniards could do no wrong “because they were working
for and with the cause of God.” “The bureaucratic unity of the Romans
was no longer possible [in the time of Fernando and Isabel], for out
of the reconquest had grown separate nations; but at least the various
peoples, the autonomous dominions, the semi-independent towns, might
be held together by the strong bond of religious unity; and with this
object the Inquisition was established, as a governmental system, to
be developed later into a political engine.... Thus it is that Spain
appears for the first time in the concert of modern European nations a
power whose very existence in a concrete form depends upon its rigid
doctrinal Catholicism.” This last assertion appears to me so doubtful
and I am so far from believing it to be just that I shall have to
devote a special study to its refutation.
* * * * *
This Spanish individualism has undoubtedly been the cause of another
characteristic feature of our history, a feature to which Hume pays
very particular attention. It is known as _cantonalism_ or _kabylism_.
I refer of course to our tendency to disruption, to separate into
tribes. Hume alludes to it at the beginning of his history in the
following notable lines: “In any case, what is known of their physique
seems to negative the supposition that they [the Iberians] were of
Indo-European or Aryan origin; and to find their counterpart at the
present time, it is only necessary to seek the Kabyl tribes of the
Atlas, the original inhabitants of the African coast opposite Spain,
who were driven back into the mountains by successive waves of
invasion. Not alone in physique do these tribes resemble what the
early Iberian must have been, but in the more unchanging peculiarities
of character and institutions the likeness is easily traceable to
the Spaniard of to-day. The organization of the Iberians, like that
of the Atlas peoples, was clannish and tribal, and their chief
characteristic was their indomitable local independence. Warlike and
brave, sober and light-hearted, the Kabyl tribesman has for thousands
of years stubbornly resisted all attempts to weld him into a nation
or subject him to a uniform dominion, while the Iberian, starting
probably from the same stock, was blended with Aryan races possessing
other qualities, and was submitted for six centuries to the unifying
organization of the greatest governing race the world ever saw--the
Romans; yet, withal, even at the present day, the main characteristics
of the Spanish nation, like that of the Kabyl tribes, is lack of
solidarity.”
This fundamental idea appears all through Hume’s book like a refrain or
_leitmotiv_.
* * * * *
Out of all this, two questions now emerge: the first, what is the
origin of this individualism? and the second, what is its cure?--the
one ethnological, the other therapeutical.
As I indicated at the beginning, in quoting the opinion of Havelock
Ellis, I am not at all disposed to believe that _kabylism_ or
_cantonalism_, the separatist tendency, proceeds from differences of
race. If Cataluña or the Basque provinces could be forthwith removed
and isolated in the middle of the Atlantic, we should very soon see
them torn by internal dissensions, by separatist tendencies, and
conflicts for supremacy would arise between the various dialects of the
Catalan and Basque languages. In the Basque provinces such internal
dissensions are beginning to be patent even to the least acute observer.
There is one capital sin that is very peculiarly Spanish, and that sin
is envy. It is a result of our peculiar individualism, and it is one
of the causes of _kabylism_. Envy has crippled and still cripples not
a few of the best minds of Spain, minds that are in other respects
vigorous and exuberant. We are all familiar with the famous simile of
the greasy pole. Deep down in our racial character there is a certain
sediment of spiritual avarice, of lack of generosity of soul, a certain
propensity to consider ourselves rich only in so far as others are
poor, and this sediment requires to be purged away.
Spanish _kabylism_ and individualism both appear to me to be effects
of one and the same cause, the cause that also produced _picarism_. In
his book entitled _Hampa_, Salillas showed very clearly how the poverty
of the soil, its failure to serve as a basis for the support of the
people, was responsible for the seasonal migration of flocks and herds
together with the vagabond life that resulted therefrom. It appears
to me more concrete and more historical to say that it obliged the
Iberians to be herdsmen. Hume expresses it exactly when he says that
the pure Spaniard has always been “an agriculturist by necessity and a
shepherd by choice,
The spectators, so far from encouraging or applauding the
competitors, are said to pull them back and generally hinder them
from securing the prize.
when he was not a soldier.” I believe that a consideration of this
pastoral character of our people would help to explain a great deal of
our history and to modify accepted verdicts. At bottom the expulsion of
the Moriscos, an industrious people of agriculturists and gardeners,
appears to me to have been due to the traditional hatred which those
whom I will call Abelites, the spiritual descendants of Abel, the
keeper of flocks, bore towards the descendants of Cain, the tiller of
the ground, who killed his brother. For the Hebrew legend of Cain and
Abel presents one of the most profound intuitions of the beginnings of
human history.
And what is the cure for this individualism? The first thing is to see
whether it is an evil, and if it appears to be one, to see if it may
not be converted into a good, for it is evident that vices and virtues
proceed from the same stock and a single passion may be turned either
to good or to evil.
The exigences of life in past ages made our remote ancestors herdsmen;
being herdsmen, they acquired all the qualities that pastoral life
tends to develop--they were idlers, they were wanderers, and they
were disunited. The lapse of time, civilized and urban life, the
necessities imposed by industrial and commercial competition--progress,
in short--will modify this basal character. Can this process be
accelerated, and by what means?--But that is another question.