Virgin
del Pilar and the Virgin del Carmen, and saints, and processions, and
magnificent churches, is a terrible strength.... If there were an
emancipated bourgeoisie and a sensible working class, Catholicism would
not be a peril; but there are not, and Catholicism will have, not
perhaps an overpowering expansion, but at least moments of new growth.
While we have a lazy rich class and a brutalized poor class, Catholicism
will be strong.'

"Leaving the utilitarian and moral questions aside, and considering
merely the amount of influence and the traces left by this influence,
one can see that Rome is living on Loyola's work and still dreaming
of Borgia's. Those pilgrims in the Piazza di San Pietro who
enthusiastically yell, _Viva il Papa-re!_ are acclaiming the memory of
Caesar Borgia. Thus you have the absurd result, people who speak with
horror of an historic figure and still hold his work in admiration.

"This Spanish influence that our country gave to the Church in two ways,
spiritual and material,--to the Church which now is an institution not
merely foreign but contrary to our nature,--Spain ought today to try
to use in her own behalf. Spain's work ought to be to organize
extra-religious individualism.

"We are individualists; therefore what we need is an iron discipline,
like soldiers.

"This discipline established, we ought to spread it through the
contiguous countries, especially through Africa. Democracy, the
Republic, Socialism, have not, essentially, any root in our land.
Families, cities, classes, can be united in a pact; isolated men, like
us, can be united only by discipline.

"Moreover, as for us, we do not recognize prestige, nor do we cheerfully
accept either kings or presidents or high priests or grand magi.

"The only thing that would suit us would be to have a chief... for the
pleasure of eating him alive.

"A Loyola of the extra-religious individualism is what Spain needs.
Deeds, always deeds, and a cold philosophy, realistic, based on deeds,
and a morality based on action. Don't you agree?

"I think, and I am becoming more confirmed in my opinion, that the only
people who can give a direction, found a new civilization with its own
proper characteristics, for that old Iberian race, which probably sprang
from the shores of the Mediterranean... is we Spaniards.

"'Why only you Spaniards?' my friend Kennedy asked me; and I told him:

"'To me it seems indubitable. France is leaning constantl