_Introduction_ 3 _The Spirit of Castile_ 30 _Spanish Individualism_ 38 _Some Arbitrary Reflections upon Europeanization_ 52 _The Spanish Christ_ 76 _The Sepulchre of Don Quixote_ 82 _The Helmet of Mambrino_ 99 _Don Quixote’s Niece_ 108 _The Religion of Quixotism_ 113 _Large and Small Towns_ 125 _To My Readers_ 133 _Soliloquies_ 142 _My Religion_ 154 _Solitude_ 163 _Intellectuality and Spirituality_ 170 _The Materialism of the Masses_ 190 _The Man of Flesh and Bone_ 195 _The Problem of Immortality_ 205 _Creative Faith_ 217 _The Song of the Eternal Waters_ 226 _The Tower of Monterrey_ 233 _Appendix_ 241 _Bibliography_ 243 ESSAYS AND SOLILOQUIES INTRODUCTION No writer ever stood less in need of an introduction than Miguel de Unamuno, for probably none ever revealed himself so naturally and so nakedly in his writings. The identity between the author and the man is absolute. He has a way of putting the whole of himself into all that he writes so that to read him is not merely to learn his views as a philosopher or a publicist, but to know his loves and hates, his hopes and despairs, as a man of flesh and bone. His method of communicating his message is not to address an audience from the elevation of the pulpit or the platform, but to accost the individual face to face, to grasp him warmly by the hand, to look him full in the eyes and tell him what is in his heart. The task of the introducer therefore may be restricted to prefixing to the intimacy so immediately established between reader and author some few notes relative to the latter’s history and the background against which he presents himself.