Like you, I often feel a nostalgia for the Middle Ages; like you, I should like to live in the throes of the millennium. If we could make people believe that on a given day, say the 2nd of May, 1908,--the centenary of our shout of independence--Spain would come to an end for ever, that on that day we should be scattered like sheep, then I believe that the 3rd of May, 1908, would be the greatest day of our history, the dawn of a new life. But now it’s all hopeless, utterly hopeless. Nothing whatever matters to anybody. And if any isolated individual attempts to agitate any problem or question, he is supposed to be prompted either by self-interest or by a thirst for notoriety and a passion for singularizing himself. Not even madness is understood here to-day. Even of the madman they say that there is method and reason in his madness. The wretched multitude takes for granted the reason of unreason. If our Lord Don Quixote were to rise again and return to this Spain of his, they would go about looking for some ulterior purpose in his noble extravagances. If any one denounces an abuse, attacks injustice, fustigates orthodox platitudes, the slavish crowd asks: What is his object in that? What is he aiming at? Sometimes they believe and say that he does it in the hope of being paid to keep quiet; sometimes that he is actuated by base and despicable passions of vengeance and envy; sometimes that his motive is vainglory, that he only wants to make a stir in order to get himself talked about; sometimes that he does it for the sake of killing time, for amusement, for sport. Pity that there are so few who go in for this kind of sport! Mark this well!--When confronted by any act of generosity, of heroism, of madness, all these stupid bachelors, curates and barbers of to-day think only of asking: Why does he do it? And as soon as they think they have discovered the reason of the action, whether their supposition is correct or not, they exclaim: Bah! he has done it for the sake of this or for the sake of that. As soon as they know the _raison d’être_ of a thing, that thing has lost all its value for them. Such are the uses of logic, filthy logic. To understand is to forgive, it has been said. And these mean souls need to understand in order to forgive their being humiliated, to forgive the indirect reproach of deeds and words that show up their own meanness. When it has occurred to them to ask themselves, stupidly enough, why God made the world, they have answered: For His own glory! And the fools are as pompously satisfied with the answer as if they knew what is meant by the glory of God. Things are made first, their wherefore comes afterwards. Give me any new idea about anything and it will tell me its wherefore afterwards.