“Don Quixote” was produced, definitely and deliberately, as a piece of propaganda. We no longer know even the names of these long-winded romances of chivalry, so we do not realize that the author, in ridiculing them, is trying to teach us something. Also, there is another kind of propaganda that Cervantes put into the book, his ideas concerning one of the gravest problems confronting mankind through the ages. What shall be the relation of the idealist, the dreamer of good and beautiful things, to the world of ugliness and greed in which he finds himself? He has a vision of something splendid, but the world knows nothing about that vision, and cannot be made to understand it; if he tries to apply it, the world will call him crazy, it will treat him so badly that before he gets through he may be really crazy. But what, after all, is it to be crazy? Is it to believe in the possibility of something splendid in life? Or is it to believe that life must always be the hateful and ugly thing we now see it? Nobody can be sure just how much Cervantes realized all this himself. There are many cases of men of genius writing, out of their sorrow and their laughter, things more wise and more deep than they know. Did Shakespeare intend Shylock to be a comic character, to be howled at and pelted by the Jew-hating mob of his time, or did he realize that in this half-comic, half-tragic figure he was voicing the grief and protest of a persecuted race? What Cervantes has done in “Don Quixote” is to supply the critics and interpreters with material for speculation through many ages to come. He gave his crack-brained old gentleman a devoted servant, with no particle of his master’s idealism or insanity. Sancho Panza is entirely normal, from the world’s point of view, a sturdy and practical fellow; yet he gets into just as many absurd scrapes as his master--because he is ignorant, and is betrayed by his own greed. So we are brought back again and again to the question: Who is it that is really crazy in this shifting and uncertain world? Is a reader of literature insane because he sets out to apply the ideas of that literature in real life? Or does insanity lie with writers who produce and critics who praise literature which cannot be applied to real life, and is not intended to be so applied? If, as I believe, the latter answer is correct--then how many foolish persons there are writing books today!