It will be apparent that I am proceeding by way of what some would call arbitrary statement, without documentation, without verification, independent of modern European logic and disdainful of its methods. Perhaps. I seek no other method than the method of passion; and when I am moved with disgust, with repugnance, with pity or with contempt, I let the mouth speak from the fullness of the heart and the words come forth as they will. We Spaniards, so they say, are arbitrary charlatans, we fill up the broken links of logic with rhetoric, we subtilize skilfully but uselessly, we lack the sense of consecutiveness and induction, we have scholastic minds, we are casuists ... etc., etc. I have heard similar things said of St. Augustine, the great African, the fiery soul that overflowed in waves of rhetoric, in phraseological contortions, in antitheses, in paradoxes and conceits. St. Augustine was at once a gongorist and a conceptist. Which leads me to believe that Gongorism and conceptism are the natural forms of passion and vehemence. The great African, the great ancient African! Here you have an expression, “ancient African,” which can be opposed to that of “modern European,” and which is at least of equal value. St. Augustine was African and he was of the ancient world; so also was Tertullian. And why should we not say: “We must Africanize ourselves ancientwise” or “We must ancientize ourselves Africanwise”? Luis de Gongora (1561-1627) elaborated an affected and euphuistic style of composition. Conception is the name given to the employment of _conceptos_, a characteristic Spanish form of conceits. It is exemplified in the writings of Quevedo (1580-1645) and its subtleties were reduced to an exact code by Baltasar Gracián in his _Agudeza y arte de ingenio_ (1642). Turning my glance inwards upon myself after the lapse of years, after having wandered among the various fields of modern European culture, I ask myself, face to face with my conscience: Am I European? am I modern? And my conscience replies: No, you are not European, not what is called European; no, you are not modern, not what is called modern. And I ask myself again: Is the fact that you feel that you are neither European nor modern due to the fact that you are a Spaniard? Are we Spaniards, at heart, irreducible to Europeanization and modernization? And if that be the case, is there no salvation for us? Is there no other life than modern and European life? Is there no other culture--or whatever you like to call it? First of all, so far as I myself am concerned, I must confess that the more I reflect upon it, the more I become aware of the inner repugnance that my spirit feels for all those that are considered to be the guiding principles of the modern European spirit, for the scientific orthodoxy of to-day, for its methods, for its tendencies.