122 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



efforts of the spiritualist school. At 

 the same time he is entitled to the 

 utmost freedom of thought and ut- 

 terance ; and if he believes there is 

 still hope of important gains to hu- 

 manity from the side of spiritualism, 

 he is justified in holding his posi- 

 tion ; and while we may think he 

 is sadly misled, we must accord him 

 the respect due to eminent talents 

 and unquestioned sincerity. 



THE CAUSE OF SPAIN'S DECADENCE. 



Until account is taken of the ef- 

 fect of war on the thoughts, feelings, 

 and institutions of men, no headway 

 can be made toward a rational ex- 

 planation of the decadence of Spain. 

 Since the outbreak of hostilities with 

 that country, which has made the 

 topic a favorite one with newspaper 

 and magazine writers, every other 

 explanation has been vouchsafed ; 

 but all of them, including the favor- 

 ite one about the mental and indus- 

 trial paralysis produced by the Span- 

 ish Inquisition, mistake effects for 

 causes. Not one of them, so far as 

 we have seen, has touched the root 

 of the matter and pointed out that 

 Spain has simply gone the way of 

 every other nation that has devoted 

 itself, not to the pursuits of peace, 

 but to the destruction of life and 

 property. 



Like all other despotisms, Span- 

 ish despotism has been the inevita- 

 ble product of the necessities of war. 

 Success in that pursuit requires that 

 the subjects of a monarch shall place 

 unreservedly their lives and prop- 

 erty at his disposal. He must be 

 permitted to levy conscriptions with- 

 out let or hindrance, and to impose 

 taxes with the same freedom. The 

 longer and more intense the mili- 

 tant activities, the more unmitigated 

 the despotism. In Spain the condi- 

 tions for the uninterrupted growth 

 of such irresponsible power have 



been especially favorable. There 

 were first the long wars with the 

 Moors, then the Italian wars, the 

 wars of the Reformation, the wars 

 of the Spanish Succession, the Na- 

 poleonic wars, followed by a period 

 of chronic revolution, and the wars 

 carried on against the natives and 

 other adversaries in the New World. 

 The impulse toward a concentration 

 of power in the hands of one man 

 engendered by these incessant con- 

 flicts could not fail to blot out of ex- 

 istence every sentiment and institu- 

 tion of freedom. Only during the 

 past twenty five years of peace has 

 either been able to gain a foothold 

 and to give a promise of regener- 

 ation. 



But the despotism growing out of 

 war means more than the bare state- 

 ment that all power over life and 

 property has been placed in the 

 hands of a monarch. It means that 

 his subjects have been deprived of 

 the right to think and act for them- 

 selves. He has taken charge of both 

 their consciences and their conduct. 

 In Spain, for some reason not easy 

 to discover, the ecclesiastical despo- 

 tism that accompanies the growth 

 of political despotism became more 

 potent and deadly than in the other 

 countries of Europe. There the 

 priests were more powerful some- 

 times than the monarch himself. 

 With the institution of the Inquisi- 

 tion during the reign of Fei'dinand 

 and Isabella they wrought a havoc 

 to the Spanish intellect that has no 

 parallel outside of the great Oriental 

 despotisms. To them is due the men- 

 tal torpor of the Spaniards, who, ac- 

 cording to U. J. Burke, wrapped 

 themselves in a cloak and " sought 

 safety in dignified silence." How 

 could the spectacle of an auto-da-fe 

 do otherwise than disincline a pru- 

 dent man to think for himself and 

 to tell what he thought ? 



That devotion to military pur- 



