These men read much, they possessed good memories, but I verily believe that, honestly, they understood nothing. Not one of them had an inkling of that almost tragic sense of the dignity of culture or of the obligations which it imposes, which distinguishes the Germans above all other nationalities. They nearly all revealed an attitude toward science which would have sat easily upon a smart, sharp-tongued Andalusian young gentleman. I recall a profoundly moving letter by the critic Garve, which is included in Kant's _Prolegomena_. Garve wrote an article upon _The Critique of Pure Reason_, and sent it to a journal at Göttingen, and the editor of the journal, in malice and animosity toward Kant, so altered it that it became an attack on the philosopher, and then published it unsigned. Kant invited his anonymous critic to divulge his name, whereupon Garve wrote to Kant explaining what had taken place, and Kant made a reply. It would be difficult to parallel in nobility these two letters, which were exchanged between a comprehensive intellect such as Garve and one of the most portentous geniuses of the world, as was Kant. They appear to be two travellers, face to face with the mystery of Nature and the Unknown. No such feeling for learning and culture is to be met with among our miserably affected Latin mountebanks. ANTI-MILITARISM I am an anti-militarist by inheritance. The Basques have never been good soldiers in the regular army. My great-grandfather Nessi probably fled from Italy as a deserter. I have always loathed barracks, messes, and officers profoundly. One day, when I was studying therapeutics with Don Benito Hernando, my brother opened the door of the class-room and motioned for me to come out. I did so, at the cost, by the way, of a furious scene with Don Benito, who shattered several test tubes in his wrath. The cause of my brother's appearance was to advise me that the Alcaldía del Centro, or Town Council of the Central District, had given notice to the effect that if I did not present myself for the draft, I was to be declared in default. As I had already laid before the Board a copy of a royal decree in which my name was set down as exempt from the draft because my father had served as a Liberal Volunteer in the late war, and because, in addition, I was born in the Basque provinces, I had supposed that the matter had been disposed of. One of those ill-natured, dictatorial officials who held sway in the offices of the Board, took it upon himself to rule that the exemption held good only in the Basque provinces, but not in Madrid, and so, in fact, for the time it proved to be. In spite of my furious protests, I was compelled to report and submit to have my measurements taken, and was well nigh upon the point of being marched off to the barracks. "I am no soldier," I thought to myself. "If they insist, I shall run away."