The individual is the only real thing in nature and in life.
Neither the species, the genus, nor the race, actually exists; they are
abstractions, terminologies, scientific devices, useful as syntheses
but not entirely exact. By means of these devices we can discuss and
compare; they constitute a measure for our minds to use, but have no
external reality.
Only the individual exists through himself and for himself. I am, I
live, is the sole thing a man can affirm.
The categories and divisions arranged for classification are like the
series of squares an artist places over a drawing to copy it by. The
lines of the squares may cut the lines of the sketch; but they will cut
them, not in reality but only in the artist’s eye.
In humanity, as in all of nature, the individual is the one thing. Only
individuality exists in the realm of life and in the realm of spirit.
Individuality is not to be grouped or classified. Individuality simply
cannot fit into a pigeon-hole, and it is all the further from fitting if
the pigeon-hole is shaped according to an ethical principle. Ethics is a
poor tailor to clothe the body of reality.
The ideas of the good, the logical, the just, the consistent, are too
generic to be completely represented in nature.
The individual is not logical, or good, or just; nor is he any other
distinct thing; and this through the force of his own fatal actions,
through the influence of the deviation in the earth’s axis, or for
whatsoever other equally amusing cause. Everything individual is
always found mixed, full of absurdities of perspective and picturesque
contradictions,--contradictions and absurdities that shock us, because
we insist on submitting individuals to principles which are not
applicable to them.
If instead of wearing a cravat and a bowler hat, we wore feathers and a
ring in our nose, all our moral notions would change.
People of today, remote from nature and nasal rings, live in an
artificial moral harmony which does not exist except in the imagination
of those ridiculous priests of optimism who preach from the columns
of the newspapers. This imaginary harmony makes us abhor the
contradictions, the incongruities of individuality, at least it forces
us not to understand them.
Only when the individual discord ceases, when the attributes of an
exceptional being are lost, when the mould is spoiled and becomes
vulgarized and takes on a common character, does it obtain the
appreciation of the multitude.
This is logical; the dull must sympathize with the dull; the vulgar and
usual have to identify themselves with the vulgar and usual.
From a human point of view, perfection in society would be something
able to safeguard the general interests and at the same time to
understand individuality; it would give the individual the advantages of
work in common and also the most absolute liberty; it would multiply the
results of his labour and would also permit him some privacy. This would
be equitable and satisfactory.
Our society does not know how to do either of these things; it defends
certain persons against the masses, because it has injustice and
privilege as its working system; it does not understand individuality,
because individuality consists in being original, and the original is
always a disturbing and revolutionary element.
A perfect democracy would be one which, disregarding hazards of birth,
would standardize as far as possible the means of livelihood, of
education, and even the manner of living, and would leave free the
intelligence, the will, and the conscience, so that they might take
their proper places, some higher than others. Modern democracy, on the
contrary, tends to level all mentalities, and to impede the predominance
of capacity, shading everything with an atmosphere of vulgarity. At the
same time it aids some private interests to take their places higher
than other private interests.
A great part of the collective antipathy for individuality proceeds from
fear. Especially in our Southern countries strong individualities have
usually been unquiet and tumultuous. The superior mob, like the lower
ones, does not wish the seeds of Cæsars or of Bonapartes to flourish in
our territories. These mobs pant for a spiritual levelling; for there is
no more distinction between one man and another than a coloured button
on the lapel or a title on the calling-card. Such is the aspiration of
our truly socialist types; other distinctions, like valour, energy,
virtue, are for the democratic steam-roller, veritable impertinences of
nature.
Spain, which never had a complete social system and has unfolded her
life and her art by spiritual convulsions, according as men of strength
and action have come bursting forth, today feels herself ruined in her
eruptive life, and longs to compete with other countries in their love
for the commonplace and well-regulated and in their abhorrence for
individuality.
In Spain, where the individual and only the individual was everything,
the collectivist aspirations of other peoples are now accepted as
indisputable dogmas. Today our country begins to offer a brilliant
future to the man who can cry up general ideas and sentiments, even
though these ideas and sentiments are at war with the genius of our
race.
It would certainly be a lamentable joke to protest against the
democratic-bourgeois tendency of the day: what is is, because it must be
and because its determined moment has come; and to rebel against facts
is, beyond dispute, childish.
I merely mention these characteristics of the actual epoch; and I point
them out to legitimatize this prologue I have written, which, for what I
know, may after all give more clearness, or may give more obscurity to
my book.... BROTHER AND SISTER
Many years ago I was stationed as doctor in a tiny Basque town, in
Cestona. Sometimes, in summer, while going on my rounds among the
villages I used to meet on the highway and on the cross-roads passersby
of a miserable aspect, persons with liver-complaint who were taking the
waters at the neighbouring cure.
These people, with their leather-coloured skin, did not arouse any
curiosity or interest in me. The middle-class merchant or clerk from the
big towns is repugnant to me, whether well or ill. I would exchange a
curt salute with those liverish parties and go my way on my old nag.
One afternoon I was sitting in a wild part of the mountain, among big
birch-trees, when a pair of strangers approached the spot where I
was. They were not of the jaundiced and disagreeable type of the
valetudinarians. He was a lanky young man, smooth-shaven, grave, and
melancholy; she, a blond woman, most beautiful.
She was dressed in white and wore a straw hat with large flowers; she
had a refined and gracious manner, eyes of blue, a very dark blue, and
flame-coloured hair.
I surmised that they were a young married couple; but he seemed too
indifferent to be the husband of so pretty a woman. In any event, they
were not recently wed.
He bowed to me, and then said to his companion:
“Shall we sit down here?”
“Very well.”
They seated themselves on the half-rotten trunk of a tree.
“Are you on a trip?” he asked me, noticing my horse fastened to a
branch.
“Yes. I am coming back from a visit.”
“Ah! Are you the town doctor?”
“Yes.”
“And do you live here, in Cestona?”
“Yes, I live here.”
“Alone?”
“Quite alone.”
“In an hotel?”
“No; in that house there down the road. Behold my house; that is it.”
“It must be hard to live among so many invalids!” he exclaimed.
“Why?” she asked. “This gentleman may not have the same ideas as you.”
“I believe I have. To my mind, he is right. It is very hard to live
here.”
“You can have nobody to talk to. That’s evident.”
“Absolutely nobody. Just imagine; there is not a Liberal in the town;
there are nothing but Carlists and Integrists.”
“And what has that to do with living contented?” she asked mockingly.
The woman was enchanting; I looked at her, a bit amazed to find her so
merry and so coquettish; and she put several questions to me about my
life and my ideas, with a tinge of irony.
I wanted to show that I was not exactly a farmer, and turning the talk
to what might be done in a town like that, I threw myself into outlining
utopian projects, and defending them with more warmth than it is
reasonable to express in a conversation with unknown persons. The
woman’s mocking smile stirred me up and impelled me to talk.
“It would be worth seeing, what a little town like this would be,” I
said, indicating the village of Cestona, “with really human life in it,
and, above all, without Catholicism. Every tenant might be a master in
his own home, throughout his life. Here you have farm-land that produces
two crops, you have woods, mountains, and a medicinal spring. The
inhabitants of Cestona might have the entire produce of the land, the
mountain to supply building-stone and fire-wood, and besides all that,
the entrance-fees at the springs.”
“And whose duty would it be to distribute the profits in this
patriarchal republic? The municipality’s?” he asked.
“Of course,” said I. “The municipality could go ahead distributing the
land, making the roads, cutting out useless middle-men; it could keep
clean, inexpensive hotels for the foreigners, and get a good return from
them.”
“And then you would not admit of inheritance, doctor?”
“Inheritance? Yes, I would admit of it in regard to things produced by
one person. I believe one ought to have the right to bequeath a picture,
a book, a piece of craftsmanship; but not land, not a mountain.”
“Yes; property-right in land is absurd,” he murmured. “The one
inconvenience that your plan would have,” he added, “would be that
people from poverty-stricken holes would pour into the perfect towns and
upset the equilibrium.”
“Then we should have to restrict the right of citizenship.”
“But I consider that an injustice. The land should be free to all.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“And religion? None whatever? Like animals,” she said ironically.
“Like animals, and like some illustrious philosophers, dear sister,” he
replied. “At the turn of a road, among the foliage, we would place a
marble statue adorned with flowers. Don’t you agree, doctor?”
“It seems to me a very good idea.”
“Above all, for me the great thing would be to forget death and sorrow
a little,” he asserted. “Not so many church-bells should be heard. I
believe that we ought even to suppress the maxim about love for one’s
neighbour. Make it the duty of the state or the municipality to take
care of the sick and the crippled, and leave men the illusion of living
healthy in a healthy world.”
“Ah! What very ugly ideas you have!” she exclaimed.
“Yes, that one seems a bit hard to me,” said I.
We were walking down toward the town by a steep and rocky path. It was
beginning to grow dusk, the river shone with silvery reflections,
and the toads broke the silence of the twilight with the sonorous,
flute-like note of their croaking.
On arriving at the highway we said good-bye; they took the stage, which
was passing at that moment in the direction of the springs, and I
mounted my hack.