See H. E. Watts, Miguel de Cervantes, p. 167. Don Quixote was "always under suspicion of the orthodox." Id. p. 166. Mr. Watts, saying nothing of Cervantes's approval of the expulsion of the Moriscoes, claims that his "head was clear of the follies and extravagances of the reigning superstition" (id. p. 231). But the case is truly summed up by Mr. Ormsby when he says: "For one passage capable of being tortured into covert satire" against things ecclesiastical, "there are ten in Don Quixote and the novels that show--what indeed is very obvious from the little we know of his life and character--that Cervantes was a faithful son of the Church" (tr. of Don Quixote, 1885, introd. i, 57).
When the total intellectual life of a nation falls ever further in the rear of the world's movement, even the imaginative arts are stunted. Turkey excepted, the civilized nations of Europe which for two centuries have contributed the fewest great names to the world's bead-roll have been Spain, Austria, Portugal, Belgium, and Greece, all noted for their "religious unity." And of all of these Spain is the supreme instance of positive decadence, she having exhibited in the first half of the sixteenth century a greater complex of energy than any of the others. [182] The lesson is monumental.
It remains to trace briefly the movement of scientific and speculative thought which constituted the transition between the Scholastic and the modern philosophy. It may be compendiously noted under the names of Copernicus, Bruno, Vanini, Galileo, Ramus, Gassendi, Bacon, and Descartes.
The great performance of Copernicus (Nicolaus Koppernigk, 1473-1543), given to the world with an editor's treacherous preface as he lay paralysed on his deathbed, did not become a general possession for over a hundred years. The long reluctance of its author to let it be published, despite the express invitation of a cardinal in the name of the pope, was well founded in his knowledge of the strength of common prejudice; and perhaps partly in a sense of the scientific imperfection of his own case. [183] Only the special favour accorded to his first sketch at Rome--a favour which he had further carefully planned for in his dedicatory epistle to Pope Paul--saved his main treatise from prohibition till long after its work was done. [184] It was in fact, with all its burden of traditional error, the most momentous challenge that had yet been offered in the modern world to established beliefs, alike theological and lay, for it seemed to flout "common sense" as completely as it did the cosmogony of the sacred books. It was probably from scraps of ancient lore current in Italy in his years of youthful study there that he first derived his idea; and in Italy none had dared publicly to propound the geocentric theory. Its gradual victory, therefore, is the first great modern instance of a triumph of reason over spontaneous and instilled prejudice; and Galileo's account of his reception of it should be a classic document in the history of rationalism.