Mexican literature -- Translations into English; Mexican prose literature
Let us leave Llanos and the other blind defenders of the vice-regal
government.
SCIENCE VERSUS SCHOLASTICISM.
Modern philosophers, notable in European lands (outside of Spain) were
numbered by hundreds, and the young Gamarra did nought but glean in so
abundant a field. Galileo and Harvey! What brilliant and suitable
examples men of great talent furnish! Harvey, in his study, with a frog
in his hand. As parallels and comparisons are most useful in
understanding a subject, as a recognized rule of law says that placing
two opposing views face to face both are more clearly known, I venture
to add--after Gamarra’s fashion--a parallel between Harvey and Domingo
Soto. _A frog!_ here I have a thing apparently vile and despicable; the
Epistles of Saint Paul, here I have a thing infinitely sublime. A film
to which the intestines of a frog are attached; what thing meaner? The
science of theology; what thing so grand? To soil one’s hands with the
blood and secretions of an animal; occupation, to all appearance, vile;
to take the pen for explaining the Holy Scriptures; occupation, sacred
and sublime. And yet, Domingo Soto with his scholastic commentaries on
the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans was of no use to humanity; and
Harvey, presenting himself in the great theater of the scientific world,
with a frog in his hand, discovering the circulation of the blood,
rendered an immense service to mankind. Domingo Soto was a Catholic, and
one of the Fathers of the Council of Trent, and Harvey was a
Protestant--and yet, without doubt, the Catholic Church does not esteem
the commentaries of its son Soto, and, in the Vatican’s council, has
sounded the praises of the discovery of the Protestant Harvey.
PHILOSOPHY IN NEW SPAIN.
COROLLARIES.
1. Studies never flourished under the Colonial regime.
2. Spain in the seventeenth century and in the first and second thirds
of the eighteenth century was poor and backward in philosophy, and New
Spain during the same period was in the same predicament.
3. That New Spain was backward in philosophy at that time because such
was the philosophy of the epoch, is false.
4. The ideas and impulse in the modern philosophical sciences, which New
Spain received during the last years of the eighteenth and the early
years of the nineteenth century, did not come mainly from Spain, but
from the other principal nations of Europe.
5. It follows, from Spain and New Spain having been backward in
philosophy, that they were also backward in theology, jurisprudence,
medicine, and in all the sciences, because philosophy is the basis of
all.
6. The expression, “Spain taught us what she herself knew,” is not a
good excuse or exoneration.
7. The scholastic philosophy is useful; the pseudo-scholastic is
prejudicial.
8. The history of the viceroyal government is most useful.
9. This dissertation is a new book.
10. “Not as a spider, nor as an ant, but as a bee.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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