It is this distrust of the tendencies of modern Western civilization that causes Unamuno to turn to the ancient, and--as he is willing to consider--African, tradition of his own country. No native reformer or foreign critic can have said harder things of his compatriots than Unamuno. His essays reverberate with the sound of the lash with which he chastises the besetting sins of the Spaniards of to-day, their servitude to the spirit of routine, their intellectual and spiritual inertia, their paralysing mutual suspicion and envy, their renunciation of the life of adventure and danger. But Unamuno distinguishes between the Spain of the passing generations and the Spain of the eternal tradition, between the agitations that give a changing form to the surface and the life that sleeps and dreams in the depths of subconsciousness. This dreaming, undying, subliminal Spain is the Spain of his love and of his faith. He appeals from Spaniards to Spain. He seeks to awaken this inner Spain to full consciousness of itself. And when it awakens it is possible that this Spain may be unable to find its expression in the terms of our current civilization. The culture in which the intellect and ideals of the advance-guard of the so-called _Kulturvölker_ naturally clothe themselves, becomes an alien and ill-fitting garment when forced upon the Iberian spirit. And perhaps the secret of this difference lies in the greater importance in the Spanish social structure of the part played by the concrete individual relatively to the instruments of culture. “Other peoples,” Unamuno says, “have left institutions, books--we have left souls.” His message to Spain might perhaps be resumed in Whitman’s words: “Produce great Persons: the rest follows.”