vent the
ambushes set by fatality, and he continues: "Caught in the trap, weak
men and weak peoples lie prone on the ground ...; to robust spirits and
strong peoples the rude shock of danger gives clear-sightedness; they
quickly penetrate into the heart of the immeasurable beauty of life, and
renouncing for ever their original hastiness and folly, emerge from the
trap with muscles taut for action and with the soul's vigour, power, and
efficiency increased a hundredfold." But let us see; weak men ... weak
peoples ... robust spirits ... strong peoples ... what does all this
mean? I do not know. What I think I know is that some individuals and
peoples have not yet really thought about death and immortality, have
not felt them, and that others have ceased to think about them, or
rather ceased to feel them. And the fact that they have never passed
through the religious period is not, I think, a matter for either men or
peoples to boast about.

The immeasurable beauty of life is a very fine thing to write about, and
there are, indeed, some who resign themselves to it and accept it as it
is, and even some who would persuade us that there is no problem in the
"trap." But it has been said by Calderon that "to seek to persuade a man
that the misfortunes which he suffers are not misfortunes, does not
console him for them, but is another misfortune in addition."[61] And,
furthermore, "only the heart can speak to the heart," as Fray Diego de
Estella said (_Vanidad del Mundo_, cap. xxi.).

A short time ago a reply that I made to those who reproached us
Spaniards for our scientific incapacity appeared to scandalize some
people. After having remarked that the electric light and the steam
engine function here in Spain just as well as in the countries where
they were invented, and that we make use of logarithms as much as they
do in the country where the idea of them was first conceived, I
exclaimed, "Let others invent!"--a paradoxical expression which I do not
retract. We Spaniards ought to appropriate to ourselves some of those
sage counsels which Count Joseph de Maistre gave to the Russians, a
people not unlike ourselves. In his admirable letters to Count
Rasoumowski on public education in Russia, he said that a nation should
not think the worse of itself because it was not made for science; that
the Romans had no understanding of the arts, neither did they possess a
mathematician, which, however, did not prevent them from playing th