Often is the question asked: what Islam did to Spain? The first response must be another question: what did Spain make of Islam? Spain was there when the Arab came. She was far older than Islam, far more populous. This Celtiberian base which it is simple and safe to call the Spaniard is a strange people. It is warlike,[6] yet submits to conquest: it is indolent yet dwells in a harsh land: it is inarticulate and savage yet transforms its masters. Carthage has come and gone. Rome has faded, after creating in Spain a spirit that is not found in other parts of Rome. The Visigoths make their easy conquest. They are touched by urban Rome already ere they come; they are no longer the rude Germans of the Rhine. Rome has annulled their savagery. Their nature is rural but their will is urban. Their nature is the foray, but their will is Pax Romana. They have no metaphysical hunger, yet they spend their might defending Arianism against the cross-fires of North Africa and Europe. Their history in Spain is their dissolution; their complete absorption in the mute, indefeasible mass of Spain which they are supposed to rule. When Târik defeats Roderick, last Visigothic king, the business is done. But henceforth, German blood suffuses like a golden glow the flesh of Iberia which has already drunk the Celt, the Semite, the Greek, the Latin. There has been no drama. This process is instinctive. Spain lives like a tree with her roots close and her branches harboring the seasons. She has taken to herself the nourishment of wind and rain, the steadfastness of sun. All Spain takes in is Spain. In her own vague life, an Idea has been born, expressive of her chaos. Now, she takes in an alien Idea to work upon her. The Arabs found their kingdom. In 755, but a generation after their arrival, Abd-er-Rahman I who sits at Córdoba breaks with the Moslem east. Almost at once, the Islam that came to Spain assumes a separate being, grows into a body independent of Bagdad and Damascus. This separation means a transformation. And the cause of it is Spain. The nature of Islam, we have seen, is like the nature of the pioneer. Pioneer values--motion, violence, acquisition, conquest--bear the Idea of the desert race, moving toward horizons. The Idea is not the horizon nor the water beyond it: it is the moving forever _toward_ the unmastered goal. Earth, in such psychology, takes on the delusive aspect of a flying road. And mortal life is synonymous with earth. It is a passing stretch. And it is close to death; for it is unreal and it is dark. The true life, the life of the Idea is that forever unattained, is that toward which our mortal days are an incessant moving. True life, then, is beyond that death which this life truly is. And to attain it, this life should be trampled like a road.