Romans; yet, withal, even at the present day, the main characteristics of the Spanish nation, like that of the Kabyl tribes, is lack of solidarity.” This fundamental idea appears all through Hume’s book like a refrain or _leitmotiv_. * * * * * Out of all this, two questions now emerge: the first, what is the origin of this individualism? and the second, what is its cure?--the one ethnological, the other therapeutical. As I indicated at the beginning, in quoting the opinion of Havelock Ellis, I am not at all disposed to believe that _kabylism_ or _cantonalism_, the separatist tendency, proceeds from differences of race. If Cataluña or the Basque provinces could be forthwith removed and isolated in the middle of the Atlantic, we should very soon see them torn by internal dissensions, by separatist tendencies, and conflicts for supremacy would arise between the various dialects of the Catalan and Basque languages. In the Basque provinces such internal dissensions are beginning to be patent even to the least acute observer. There is one capital sin that is very peculiarly Spanish, and that sin is envy. It is a result of our peculiar individualism, and it is one of the causes of _kabylism_. Envy has crippled and still cripples not a few of the best minds of Spain, minds that are in other respects vigorous and exuberant. We are all familiar with the famous simile of the greasy pole. Deep down in our racial character there is a certain sediment of spiritual avarice, of lack of generosity of soul, a certain propensity to consider ourselves rich only in so far as others are poor, and this sediment requires to be purged away. Spanish _kabylism_ and individualism both appear to me to be effects of one and the same cause, the cause that also produced _picarism_. In his book entitled _Hampa_, Salillas showed very clearly how the poverty of the soil, its failure to serve as a basis for the support of the people, was responsible for the seasonal migration of flocks and herds together with the vagabond life that resulted therefrom. It appears to me more concrete and more historical to say that it obliged the Iberians to be herdsmen. Hume expresses it exactly when he says that the pure Spaniard has always been “an agriculturist by necessity and a shepherd by choice, The spectators, so far from encouraging or applauding the competitors, are said to pull them back and generally hinder them from securing the prize.