[12] "Brother to the eagles of the Caucasus--who fanned piously with their wings the bleeding face of Prometheus." [13] _Decadentismo y americanismo_, in _El castillo de Elsinor_. Caracas 1902. [14] "There is not in the world a prettier woman!--Foot of an Andalusian, mouth of fruit--Sparkling wit of Veuve Cliquot--Waist of wasp, skin like a bird's wing--The roguish eyes of a schoolgirl--Such the eyes of Louise Theo." [15] "If it is a punishment, what sin--have we without knowing committed?--If it is a reward, how gained?--Without having asked it,--say, why do we live?" [16] "What whiter than the candid lily?--What purer than the mystic wax?--What more chaste than the tender orange-blossom?" [17] See the study of these innovations in _Horas de estudio_, by P. Henriquez Ureña, p. 118 _et seq_. Paris, Ollendorff. [18] "I pursue a form which my pen does not find--the bud of an idea which would be the rose." {271} CHAPTER III THE EVOLUTION OF PHILOSOPHY Bello--Hostos--The influence of England--Positivism--The influence of Spencer and Fouillée--The sociologists. The democracies of America have not created new systems of philosophy; they have rather contributed, with Emerson and William James in the United States, to propound the old problems in a new light. Politics and history have been the occupation of intelligent men. To pure speculation they have preferred the patient study of the past, and the impassioned analysis of the conflicts of the day. Yet they adopted European theories from the earliest years of the Republic: those of the French ideologists, Cabanis and Laromiguière were the predominant influences in some schools, while the influence of England extended from Central America to Chili. With that influence went a moderate utilitarianism, a bold analysis of the doctrines of political and economic liberty. England contributed to the liberty of America in Montevideo as in Colombia; with the English gold which the revolutionaries received the English philosophic radicalism entered the country. Jurists and politicians profited by its lessons, and certain of the thinkers of America freed themselves from the shackles of the peripatetic school under the influence of the Scottish philosophers. Thus Ventura Martin and José-Joaquin de Mora in Chili and Alcorta in the Argentine. With {272} Andrès Bello, poet and legislator, philosopher and philologist, these doctrines acquired a great importance. His _Philosophy of the Understanding_ was inspired by Reid and Hamilton. In England he had known James Mill, and some of his ideas upon the inductive method and causality recall the doctrines of John Stuart Mill, the son of James. Bello was especially noted for the vigour of his logic and his analysis of the phenomena of consciousness, his penetrating psychology, and his positivism, which caused him to disdain anything in the nature of metaphysics. His conservative spirit accepted the Catholic dogmas,