Without attempting to sketch chronologically, either this rise or this decline, let us rather direct our efforts to an inquiry into the causes of both the one and the other.

In attempting to explain the greatness of Spain we must give first place to the vigor of the Spanish race.  The great Spaniard was a mighty compound.  He had the blood of Rome mingled with the awful torrent that gave birth to the soulless Goths and Vandals.  In him also flowed the hot blood of the Moors.  He was both sturdy and fiery; he had the fervor of the South with the tenacity of the North; the pride of the Roman with the passion of the Moor.  The Spanish race was emphatically a rich race.

And then we must remember that this race had been forged in war.  Century after century, from the earliest times, they had lived with their arms in their hands.  First came the long war between the Arian Vandals, and the Trinitarian natives; then the seven-hundred-year war with the followers of Mahomed.  The whole mission of life to them was to fight.

Naturally there was developed in the people at large the most complete unification and subjection.  Individualism gave place almost entirely to the common weal, and the spectacle was presented of a nation with no political questions.  Maccaulay maintains that human nature is such that aggregations of men will always show the two principles of radicalism and conservatism, and that two parties will exist in consequence, one composed of those who are ever looking to a brighter future, the other of those who are ever seeking to restore a delightful past; but no such phenomena appear in the ascending period of Spain’s history.  The whole nation moved as an organized army, steadily forward, until its zenith was reached.  This solidity was a marked element of its strength.

Mr. Buckle recognizes this, and accounts for the harmonious movements of the nation by the influence of two leading principles, which he is pleased to call superstition and loyalty.  The Arab invasion had pressed upon the Christians with such force that it was only by the strictest discipline that the latter had managed to survive.  To secure such discipline, and at the same time supply the people with the steady enthusiasm necessary to support a war from century to century, all the terrors and all the glories that could be derived from religion were employed.  The church and the state, the prince and the priest, became as one, and loyalty and religion, devotion to the standard and to the cross, were but different names for the same principles and actions.  Hence Spain emerged to greatness without the least dream of liberty of either person, conscience or thought.  Her rallying cry was:  For the Prince and the Church; not, For God and Liberty.  She went up to greatness the most loyal and the most religious of nations; but Liberty, Justice and Truth were not upon her banners.