ing, Sancho the
simple. If, as some say, in Spain Don Quixote is dead and Sancho lives,
then we are saved, for Sancho, his master dead, will become a
knight-errant himself. And at any rate he is waiting for some other mad
knight to follow again.

And there is also a tragedy of Sancho. The other Sancho, the Sancho who
journeyed with the mortal Don Quixote--it is not certain that he died,
although some think that he died hopelessly mad, calling for his lance
and believing in the truth of all those things which his dying and
converted master had denounced and abominated as lies. But neither is it
certain that the bachelor Sanson Carrasco, or the curate, or the barber,
or the dukes and canons are dead, and it is with these that the
heroical Sancho has to contend.

Don Quixote journeyed alone, alone with Sancho, alone with his solitude.
And shall we not also journey alone, we his lovers, creating for
ourselves a Quixotesque Spain which only exists in our imagination?

And again we shall be asked: What has Don Quixote bequeathed to
_Kultur_? I answer: Quixotism, and that is no little thing! It is a
whole method, a whole epistemology, a whole esthetic, a whole logic, a
whole ethic--above all, a whole religion--that is to say, a whole
economy of things eternal and things divine, a whole hope in what is
rationally absurd.

For what did Don Quixote fight? For Dulcinea, for glory, for life, for
survival. Not for Iseult, who is the eternal flesh; not for Beatrice,
who is theology; not for Margaret, who is the people; not for Helen, who
is culture. He fought for Dulcinea, and he won her, for he lives.

And the greatest thing about him was his having been mocked and
vanquished, for it was in being overcome that he overcame; he overcame
the world by giving the world cause to laugh at him.

And to-day? To-day he feels his own comicness and the vanity of his
endeavours so far as their temporal results are concerned; he sees
himself from without--culture has taught him to objectify himself, to
alienate himself from himself instead of entering into himself--and in
seeing himself from without he laughs at himself, but with a bitter
laughter. Perhaps the most tragic character would be that of a Margutte
of the inner man, who, like the Margutte of Pulci, should die of
laughter, but of laughter at himself. _E ridera in eterno_, he will
laugh for all eternity, said the Angel Gabriel of Margutte. Do you not
hear the laughter of God?

T