world of commerce, or that of private relations. ' Each his own leader' is a favourite norm of action in Spain. In this sense, therefore, the incoherence of Spanish literary life may be considered as permanent, since it is rooted in the national character. It is, however, modified by features of a transitory nature, which can only be rightly understood when taken in relation to the literary and educational evolution of the country.

Every nation evolves according to its own rhythm, determined in its turn by the interplay of national character and external conditions. But, leaving aside the vicissitudes of general history, the literary development of most nations reflects in ft s broken course the inner struggle between conflicting tendencies within the national character. Thus, in the history of English poetry are interwoven two conflicting tendencies, both distinctly typical of the English character, i. e. the xsthetical-pagan tendency, which can be found almost pure in Shakespeare, and the ethical-puritan tendency, strong in Milton and Shelley, predominant in Wordsworth. Thus, again, French literature owes much of its brilliancy and attractiveness to the interplay between the two shades of French intellectualism ; the constructive classicism of Bossuet, Racine, and Montesquieu, and the dissolving, analytical spirit of Montaigne, Voltaire, and Anatole France ; two seemingly opposite varieties of one single spirit which are effectively combined in Pascal's Lettres Provinciales, or, again, in some of the comedies of Moliere.

A similar fact occurs in Spanish literary history. But while in France and England the rhythm of literary development is determined by the conflict of two strong tendencies, in Spain it results from the lack of balance between the creative and the critical faculty of the race. The Spanish people are a pre-eminently passionate race, and their literature, therefore, evinces

all the strength and all the weakness of passion. They are rich in those gifts which spring spontaneously from the subconscious depths of Nature ; strong but irregular impulses ; penetrating but unreliable instincts. They possess vision, divination, intuition, grace, and mother wit, power, grasp of reality, and a capacity for sudden discharges of almost unbounded energy. They are not, however, so well gifted in those qualities which are either the inherited capital or the hoarded-up treasure of the conscious self, such as speculative vigour, sustained and controlled feeling, and perseverance. A further illustration of the deep differences which distinguish the so-called ' Latin' peoples. While France and Italy are eminently intellectual and critical, Spain is eminently intuitive and creative. And this predominance of the creative over the critical faculty is precisely the characteristic feature of Spanish literature and civilization.

Throughout Spanish literary history what is strong is the fruit of genius, what is weak is the work of talent. This is noticeable even in such fields of mental activity as philosophy and science, in which the contribution of Spain to the common fund of knowledge consists in brilliant and bold anticipation rather than in patient development. We would mention Vives, the precursor of Bacon ; Servet, the precursor of Harvey ; Vazquez Menchaca, the precursor of Grotius. But it becomes clearer in literature and the arts, where it explains the contrast between the vigour of spontaneous creation, guided by inspiration and instinct, and the feebleness of artistic' attempts, regulated by doctrine and taste. No better illustration could be found for this contrast than Cervantes himself, who left us in Don Quixote models of his best and of his worst style—his best in those passages which he wrote when simply telling his tale and

2705