History of Central America, Volume 1, 1501-1530: The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 6Bancroft, Hubert Howe
History
History of Central America, Volume 1, 1501-1530: The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 6
Bancroft, Hubert Howe
Central America -- History
So in the volatile, dark-haired Celt, where reckless courage and
indifference to human life reached their height, where quick perception
and ready wit supplied the place of sober thought and logical
deductions, where man was courageous and changeable, and woman was
at once fickle, chaste, and passionate—in these fierce barbarians we
see a multitude of traits handed by them to their descendants. Of
Phœnician and Iberian influence, traces are seen in their skill in
scientific mining; of Gothic, in their comparatively liberal forms of
government, their attachment to military display, and in their good
faith, integrity, and morality—would these latter had been a trifle
more Gothic; of Roman, in their love of ecclesiastical forms, church and
state loyalty, in their stately dignity and sobriety of deportment; of
Arab, in their hatred of work, their love of freedom, their religious
enthusiasm, their tactics in war, and in their language, poetry, art,
and architecture. Some of these terms appear paradoxical, but human
nature, in its ingredients, is ever paradoxical. In the Spanish language
Brace discovers that the principal "terms for agriculture and science
are Latin; for the Church, Latin or Greek; for arms, riding, and war,
Teutonic; and for arts and plants in southern Spain, Arabic." From the
north and east and south the boldest of the nations had congregated on
this frontier peninsula, waiting the outburst which, after a thousand
years of fermentation, broke over its western slope.
Buckle, in support of a theory referring the origin of character to
physical causes, ascribes the superstition of Spain to famine and
disease, to earthquakes and the awe-producing phenomena of wild scenery;
their fickleness he attributes to climate, the heat and dryness in
Spain interrupting labor and leading to desultory habits; their love
of romance and adventure he traces to pastoral life, which prevailed to
the neglect of agriculture during the Moorish invasion.
[Sidenote: EVOLUTION OF THE SPANISH NATION.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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