frequently used to be equally understood by every one. And I feel that I could give no better definition of the meaning which it has for Spain than the opening words of Miguel de Unamuno's masterpiece, El Sentimiento Trdgico de la Vida.' The first chapter of this book under the title of ' The Man of Flesh and Bones ', begins with the following words :

Homo sum ; nihil humani a me alienum Auto, said the Latin playwright. And I would rather say, nullum hominem a me alienum Auto ; I am a man, no other man do I deem a stranger. For the adjective humanus is as suspect to me as its abstract substantive humanitas, humanity. Neither the human nor humanity, neither the simple nor the substantivized adjective, but the concrete substantive, man. The man of flesh and bones, he who is born, suffers and dies—particularly, dies—he who eats and drinks and plays and sleeps and thinks and wills, the man who sees and is heard, the brother, the true brother.

For there is another thing, which they also call man, and which is the subject of not a few divagations more or less scientific. And it is the featherless biped of the legend, the (iiov 7roArrocciv of Aristotle, the social contracting party of Rousseau, the homo oeconomicus of the Manchesterians, the homo sapiens of Linnxus, or if so preferred, the vertical mammal. A man who is neither here nor there, who belongs neither to this nor to that epoch, who has neither sex nor country, in one word, an idea. That is, a not-man.

Thus, in what he is and in what he is not, Unamuno admirably defines the man of Spanish philosophy of life, the man of flesh and bones. It is this man who is the main if not the only subject of Spanish art and literature. No other nation—save perhaps Shakespeare, a nation unto himself—can show such a strong tendency towards the creation of concrete types of human beings. Observe how, all through Spanish art, definite types, on canvas, in the novel, or in

1 An English translation of this work is now available, The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Peoples, Macmillan & Co., 1921.

drama, stand out in such relief that in contrast the background of nature and circumstance sinks into insignificance. From the very outset Spanish literature centres on the doings of that great man, El Cid. The Archpriest of Hita is so richly endowed with the creative gift that, not content with founding in Trotaconventos, that great though disreputable dynasty to which later on Celestina was to give eternal lustre, he can transform into living beings pagan myths such as Dona Venus and Don Amor, as well as Christian abstractions such as Dona Cuaresma and Don Carnal. La Celestina is a marvellous set of characters created in true dramatic fashion out of the very stuff of action. It is unnecessary to dwell on the picaresque novels, still less on Don Quixote, the two prominent heroes of which tend to overshadow the multitude of other persons who throng its lively pages. The Spanish Theatre, it is true, created a relatively small number of characters. But this fact is perhaps due to an excess rather than to a defect of creative power. That the power was there is shown by such figures as Pedro Crespo (El Alcalde de Zalamea), Segismundo (La Vida es sueno), Enrico (El Condenado por Desconfiado), many of Tirso's women and above all Don Juan. But the Spanish Theatre had to satisfy the truly Gargantuan appetite of the public for plays, and the result was that dramatists wrote in great haste, as it were while the public and the actors waited. Full development of characters was impossible under such conditions. Moreover, most of their plays should be considered as mere sketches and exercises in character rather than as attempts at complete creation. The taste of the public for human life, that is for men in action, required an ever renewed supply of plots and situations which it was not thought worth while developing, suggestion being sufficient for a society highly trained in dramatic pleasure. For our present