For just as a new
friend enriches our spirit, not so much by what he gives us of himself,
as by what he causes us to discover in our own selves, something which,
if we had never known him, would have lain in us undeveloped, so it is
with a new public. Perhaps there may be regions in my own Spanish
spirit--my Basque spirit, and therefore doubly Spanish--unexplored by
myself, some corner hitherto uncultivated, which I should have to
cultivate in order to offer the flowers and fruits of it to the peoples
of English speech.
And now, no more.
God give my English readers that inextinguishable thirst for truth which
I desire for myself.
MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO.
SALAMANCA,
_April, 1921._
* * * * *
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
Footnotes added by the Translator, other than those which merely
supplement references to writers or their works mentioned in the text,
are distinguished by his initials.
I
THE MAN OF FLESH AND BONE
_Homo sum; nihil humani a me alienum puto_, said the Latin playwright.
And I would rather say, _Nullum hominem a me alienum puto_: I am a man;
no other man do I deem a stranger. For to me the adjective _humanus_ is
no less suspect than its abstract substantive _humanitas_, humanity.
Neither "the human" nor "humanity," neither the simple adjective nor the
substantivized adjective, but the concrete substantive--man.
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