It may be said that in the contemplation of this vision the only rational attitude for the human spirit to adopt is that of resignation to mortality. But this counsel can only be given by those who are affectively insensitive, and in Unamuno the will to live and to survive are too imperious to submit to it unprotestingly. The note of passionate protest rings in his writings. He inscribes upon his page the challenge of Sénancour’s _Obermann_: “_L’homme est périssable. Il se peut; mais périssons en résistant, et, si le néant nous est reservé, ne faisons pas que ce soit une justice._” Life refuses to abdicate to reason; between the rationalistic and vitalistic attitude to existence there is an impassable gulf. His own personal solution is found in the inspiration and energy which he draws from this position of uncertainty and conflict. “I will not make peace between my heart and my head,” he cries; “rather let the one affirm what the other denies and the one deny what the other affirms, and I shall live by this contradiction.” His “Tragic Sense of Life,” which is the record of the encounter of his spirit with the problems centring round the salvation of man from death and annihilation, issues in the assertion that all virtue is based upon “uncertainty, doubt, perpetual wrestling with the mystery of our final destiny, mental despair, and the lack of any solid and stable dogmatic foundation.” Convert _Obermann’s_ sentence from its negative to a positive form--“if it is nothingness that awaits us, let us so act that it shall be an injustice”--and you get “the firmest basis of action for the man who cannot or will not be a dogmatist.” A solution, perhaps, but a desperate one.