Thus we see Don Quixote’s mockers mocked by him, quixotized in their own despite, joining in the fray and fighting with all their might to defend the Faith of the Knight, although without sharing it. I am convinced--although Cervantes does not tell us so--I am convinced that the partisans of the Knight, the quixotists or helmetists, after having received and administered punishment, began themselves to doubt whether the basin were a basin and to believe that it really was the helmet of Mambrino, for their ribs bore evidence of their belief. It must be affirmed here yet again that it is martyrs who create faith rather than faith that creates martyrs. In few of his adventures does Don Quixote appear greater than in this one, in which he imposes his faith upon those who mocked at it, so that they are led to defend it with kicks and blows and to suffer for it. And what was it that inspired them to do so? Simply his courage in affirming before everybody that that basin, which he no less than they saw with his own eyes to be a basin, was the helmet of Mambrino, for to him it served the office of a helmet. This is the courage of the purest water--that which resists not merely a shock to the reason or decay of fortune or loss of honour, but also being taken for a madman and an idiot. This is the courage that we need in Spain and our soul remains paralysed because of the lack of it. It is because of the lack of it that we are neither powerful nor wealthy nor cultured; it is because of the lack of it that we have no system of irrigation, no good harvests; it is because of the lack of it that it doesn’t rain more on our drought-parched fields, or that when it does rain it rains in torrents, sweeping away the manure and sometimes sweeping away the houses too. This seems to you like a paradox? Go into the country and propose to any farmer some improvement in his methods of cultivation or the introduction of a new kind of crop or of a new agricultural machine, and he will say: “That doesn’t pay here.” “Have you tried it?” you ask, and he simply repeats: “That doesn’t pay here.” He doesn’t know whether it pays or whether it doesn’t pay, for he hasn’t tried it and doesn’t mean to try it. He would try it if he were sure of its success beforehand, but the prospect of the possibility of a failure, with the consequent mockery and derision of his neighbours, the possibility of their taking him for a deluded fool or a lunatic, this prospect terrifies him and so he doesn’t experiment. And then people are surprised at the triumph of those who have the courage to face ridicule serenely, of those who rid themselves of the herd-instinct.