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 their part in the world; and in particular we should take to heart everything that he said about that crowd of arrogant sciolists who idolize the tastes, the fashions, and the languages of foreign countries, and are ever ready to pull down whatever they despise—­and they despise everything.

We have not the scientific spirit?  And what of that, if we have some other spirit?  And who can tell if the spirit that we have is or is not compatible with the scientific spirit?

But in saying “Let others invent!” I did not mean to imply that we must be content with playing a passive role.  No.  For them their science, by which we shall profit; for us, our own work.  It is not enough to be on the defensive, we must attack.

But we must attack wisely and cautiously.  Reason must be our weapon.  It is the weapon even of the fool.  Our sublime fool and our exemplar, Don Quixote, after he had destroyed with two strokes of his sword that pasteboard visor “which he had fitted to his head-piece, made it anew, placing certain iron bars within it, in such a manner that he rested satisfied with its solidity, and without wishing to make a second trial of it, he deputed and held it in estimation of a most excellent visor."[62] And with the pasteboard visor on his head he made himself immortal—­that is to say, he made himself ridiculous.  For it was by making himself ridiculous that Don Quixote achieved his immortality.