In their survival they became neither tragic nor heroic. Naught could be farther from the Basque than such other peculiar peoples as the Armenian or Jew. The Basques had no separate Book, no separate God. Very early, they accepted Christ. He did not make them merge with their Catholic neighbors, because their instincts were differently attuned. Spain is a world of Tragedy, of mystic ideals, of devotion to unseen spirits. The Basque is concrete, light, canny. The Spaniard faces all that he encounters: this confrontation is the genius of Tragedy. But the Basque _evades_: and this evasion is the genius of Comedy. Who the Basques were is not clear: doubtless early dwellers in the Peninsula--part of the peoples whom the Phœnicians found when they first skirted Spain. Their music suggests kinship with the Celt; but this may well be due to the neighborhood of the Celts who named the Spanish province of Galicia. Their music as well suggests kinship with the Berbers--the Rifians of Morocco. Their language is inscrutably alone: it bears no relation with any of the tongues of Babel. But whoever they were they remain. Their blood in the small towns is little mixed; and their heads unmixed also. While through the ages, Spain drank a torrent of Ideas--Greek, Roman, Moslem, Christian, Jew--and bent to the tragic fusing of Africa, Asia, Europe, America into a single Spain, the Basque quite simply kept on being himself. His virtues, like those of his mountains, are conservatism and power of non-absorption. The Basque language paints this well. It contains no word for _God_, no word for _spirit_. This is a people rooted to the earth and which kept to its pastures and farmyards.[27] Not alone had the Basque mind not reached metaphysics and religion when his tongue was formed: even common concepts were beyond it. There is a Basque word for dog, pig, cow, lizard: there is none for _animal_. There is a Basque word for oak, pine, chestnut: there is none for _tree_. A most excellently defended, anti-platonic people! Their mountains and their mountain-courage warded them free of many floods of races. And their heads kept them clear of metaphysics. Concepts of God, time, substance are drains upon the business of life. For the interims of business, there is the singing of songs, there is the gathering in eights to dance the bland _aurrescu_. The towns of the Basques express them. The little Guipúzcoan village lies between the mountains and the sea. The mountains slope into a level field with cattle and kine growing fat in the lush grasses. The field rolls to a precipitous edge of rock which falls a thousand feet into the Bay of Biscay. The beach is a conch with sand as smooth and white as the heart of a sea-shell. Through the town, a road girding the villages runs on the seawall. On the one side of the road, the Bay of Biscay--blue as a bluebell: on the other, the precipice with stone-hewn steps that lead to an Alpine verdance of pasture and of dingle.