Page:Zawis and Kunigunde (1895).djvu/208

 “They have extended this tendency from open warfare to secret murder; and this intoxicating fury blinds their eyes to the noble attainments of science, the glorious achievements of handicraft, and the profound investigations of philosophy. But the science that they despise, the art and beauty that they deface, must, according to the essential attributes of the human mind, produce a power in some people that cultivate and apply them with generous intelligence, which will inflict on ignorant and cruel Spain a bloody chastisement that will cover her with infamy. She renders herself empty even of her natural strength; she cuts out her own vitals, and exposes her wanton decrepitude to the anger of insulted humanity. The alleged divine sanction on which she rests this wantonness is only the alarmed revival of atavistic ferocity that seems celestial only because it springs from a hostility to that complex progress that presents, in its exaltation, a menace to the ignorance that cowers before it. That overawing splendor seems to embody an evil deity. The savage never stays his hand to reflect upon the wonders that he destroys. If he did he would not be a savage.

“On the other hand, oriental tribes, now rapidly combining in nations, have received from contact with people in some respects more advanced, an idea of the elevation of human character by one grand sentiment, the oneness of the Deity. That single principle has become with them not only a dominating creed, but an excluding philosophy. It exalts men to the throne of God according to their theory. They