Youth and Egolatry Part 17

PROFESSORS

I have not been fortunate in my professors. It might be urged that I have not been in a position, being idle and sluggish, to take advantage of their instruction. I believe, however, that if they had been good teachers, now that so many years have pa.s.sed, I should be able to acknowledge their merits.

I cannot remember a single teacher who knew how to teach, or who succeeded in arousing any interest in what he taught, or who had any comprehension of the student mentality. No one learned how to reason in the schools of my youth, nor mastered any theory, nor acquired a practical knowledge of anything. In other words, we learned nothing.

In medicine, the professors adhered to a system that was the most foolish imaginable. In the two universities in which I studied, subjects might be taken only by halves, which would have been ridiculous enough in any branch, but it was even more preposterous in medicine. Thus, in pathology, a certain number of intending physicians studied the subject of infection, while others studied nervous disorders, and yet others the diseases of the respiratory organs. n.o.body studied all three. A plan of this sort could only have been conceived by Spanish professors, who, it may be said in general, are the quintessence of vacuity.

"What difference does it make whether the students learn anything or not?" every Spanish professor asks himself continually.

Unamuno says, apropos of the backwardness of Spaniards in the field of invention: "Other nations can do the inventing." In other words, let foreigners build up the sciences, so that we may take advantage of them.

There was one among my professors who considered himself a born teacher and, moreover, a man of genius, and he was Letamendi. I made clear in my _Tree of Knowledge_ what I thought of this professor, who was not dest.i.tute, indeed, of a certain talent as an orator and man of letters.

When he wrote, he was rococo, like so many Catalans. Sometimes he would discourse upon art, especially upon painting, in the cla.s.s-room, but the ideas he entertained were preposterous. I recall that he once said that a mouse and a book were not a fit subject for a painting, but if you were to write the words _Aristotle's Works_ on the book, and then set the mouse to gnawing at it, what had originally meant nothing would immediately become a subject for a picture. Yes, a picture to be hawked at the street fairs!

Letamendi was prolixity and puerile ingenuity personified. Yet Letamendi was no different from all other Spaniards of his day, including even the most celebrated, such as Castelar, Echegaray and Valera.

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 att.i.tude 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 Gottingen, 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 n.o.bility 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 cla.s.s-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 Alcaldia 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."

I went at once from the Alcaldia to the Ministry and called upon a Guipuzcoan politician, as my father had previously advised me to do; but the man was a political mastodon, puffed up with huge pretensions, who, perhaps, might have been a stevedore in any other country. So he did nothing. Finally, it occurred to me to go and see the Conde de Romanones, who had just been appointed Alcalde del Centro, having jurisdiction over the district.

When I entered his office, Romanones appeared to be in a jovial frame of mind. He wore a flower in his b.u.t.ton-hole. Two persons were with him, one of whom was no other than the Secretary of the Board, my enemy.

I related what had happened to Romanones with great force. The Secretary then answered.

"The young man is right," said the Count. "Bring me the roll of the draft."

The roll was brought. Romanones took his pen and crossed my name off altogether. Then he turned to me with a smile:

"Don't you care to be a soldier?"

"No, sir."

"But what are you, a student?"

"Yes, sir."

"In which branch?"

"Medicine."

"Good! Very good. You may go now."

I would willingly have been anything to have escaped becoming a soldier, and so be obliged to live in barracks, eat mess, and parade.

TO VALENCIA

I failed in both June and September during the fourth year of my course, which was a mere matter of luck, as I neither applied myself more nor less than in previous years.

In the meantime my father had been transferred to Valencia, whither it seemed wise that I should remove to continue my studies.

I appeared at Valencia in January for a second examination in general pathology, and failed for the second time.

I began to consider giving up my intended profession.

I found that I had lost what little liking I had for it. As I had no friends in Valencia, I never left the house; I had nowhere to go. I pa.s.sed my days stretched out on the roof, or, else, in reading. After debating long what I should do, and realizing fully that there was no one obvious plan to pursue, I determined to finish my course, committing the required subjects mechanically. After adopting this plan, I never failed once.

When I came up for graduation, the professors made an effort to put some obstacles in my way, which, however, were not sufficient to detain me.

Admitted as a physician, I decided next to study for the doctor's degree at Madrid.

My former fellow-students, when they saw that now I was doing nicely, all exclaimed:

"How you have changed! Now you pa.s.s your examinations."

"Pa.s.sing examinations, you know, is a combination, like a gambling game," I told them.

"I have found a combination."