How was it that Krausism took root here 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 mockingly presents Christ to them, saying, “Behold the man!” the people mutinies and shouts “Crucify him!  Crucify him!” The people does not want comedy but tragedy.  And that which Dante, the great Catholic, called the Divine Comedy, is the most tragical tragedy that has ever been written.

And as I have endeavoured in these essays to exhibit the soul of a Spaniard, and therewithal the Spanish soul, I have curtailed the number of quotations from Spanish writers, while scattering with perhaps too lavish a hand those from the writers of other countries.  For all human souls are brother-souls.