VARIETY
625
ditry and their piety, the way they associated the Gospels with murder,
the Crucifix with the sword. At its finest moments, Catholicism was san–
guinary, as is proper for any truly inspired religion.
Conquest and Inquisition-parallel phenomena, products of Spain's
imposing vices. As long as she was strong, she excelled in massacres, and
to them brought not only her partiality for ceremony, but also the inner–
most realms of her sensibility. Only cruel peoples have the chance to
approach the very sources of life, its palpitations, its kindling arcana:
life reveals its essence only to eyes inflamed with blood-lust. . . . How
can we believe in philosophies when we know what pale faces they
reflect? The habit of reasoning, of speculation, is the sign of a vital
in–
adequacy, a decline in affectivity. To think methodically, a man must,
with the help of his deficiencies, forget himself, no longer be an integral
part of his ideas: philosophy, the privilege of individuals and of
biologically
superficial peoples.
It
is almost impossible to talk to a Spaniard about anything but his
country, a closed universe that is the subject of his lyricism and his
reflections, an absolute province, outside the world. Alternately exalted
and downcast, he turns his morose and dazzled eyes upon Spain; being
drawn and quartered is his form of vigor.
If
he allows himself a future,
he does not really believe in it. His discovery: the somber illusion, the
pride of despair; his genius: the genius of nostalgia.
Whatever his political orientation, the Spaniard or the Russian who
questions himself about his country treats the only question that matters
in his eyes. We understand why neither Spain nor Russia has produced
a major philosopher.
It
is because the philosopher must attack ideas as
a spectator; before assimilating them, making them his own, he must
consider them from outside, dissociate himself from them, weigh them
and, if need be,
play- with
them; then, with the help of maturity, he
elaborates a system with which he never altogether identifies himself.
It
is this superiority with regard to their own philosophy we admire in the
Greeks. The same is true for all those who attach themselves to the
problem of knowledge and make it the essential object of their medita–
tion. This problem troubles neither the Russians nor the Spanish. Un–
suited to intellectual contemplation, they maintain quite bizarre relations
with the Idea.
If
they challenge it, they always have the
under hand;
it
seizes, subjugates, oppresses them; consenting martyrs, they ask only to
suffer for it. With them, we are far from the domain where the mind
plays with itself and with things, far from any methodical perplexity.
The abnormal evolution of Russia and Spain has therefore led them
to question themselves as to their own destiny. But these are two great
