e in Spain, while Kantism and
Hegelianism did not, although the two latter systems are much more
profound, morally and philosophically, than the first? Because in
transplanting the first, its roots were transplanted with it. The
philosophical thought of a people or a period is, as it were, the
flower, the thing that is external and above ground; but this flower, or
fruit if you prefer it, draws its sap from the root of the plant, and
this root, which is in and under the ground, is the religious sense. The
philosophical thought of Kant, the supreme flower of the mental
evolution of the Germanic people, has its roots in the religious feeling
of Luther, and it is not possible for Kantism, especially the practical
part of it, to take root and bring forth flower and fruit in peoples who
have not undergone the experience of the Reformation and who perhaps
were incapable of experiencing it. Kantism is Protestant, and we
Spaniards are fundamentally Catholic. And if Krause struck some roots
here--more numerous and more permanent than is commonly supposed--it is
because Krause had roots in pietism, and pietism, as Ritschl has
demonstrated in his _Geschichte des Pietismus_, has specifically
Catholic roots and may be described as the irruption, or rather the
persistence, of Catholic mysticism in the heart of Protestant
rationalism. And this explains why not a few Catholic thinkers in Spain
became followers of Krause.

And since we Spaniards are Catholic--whether we know it or not, and
whether we like it or not--and although some of us may claim to be
rationalists or atheists, perhaps the greatest service we can render to
the cause of culture, and of what is of more value than culture,
religiousness--if indeed they are not the same thing--is in endeavouring
to formulate clearly to ourselves this subconscious, social, or popular
Catholicism of ours. And that is what I have attempted to do in this
work.

What I call the tragic sense of life in men and peoples is at any rate
our tragic sense of life, that of Spaniards and the Spanish people, as
it is reflected in my consciousness, which is a Spanish consciousness,
made in Spain. And this tragic sense of life is essentially the Catholic
sense of it, for Catholicism, and above all popular Catholicism, is
tragic. The people abhors comedy. When Pilate--the type of the refined
gentleman, the superior person, the esthete, the rationalist if you
like--proposes to give the people comedy and