Doctor San Martin was fond of telling how he was sitting one day upon a
bench in the Retiro, reading.
"Are you reading a novel?" inquired a gentleman, sitting down beside
him.
"No, I am studying."
"What! Studying at your age?" exclaimed the gentleman, amazed.
The same remark might be made to me: "What! Sitting under a master at
your age?"
As far as I am concerned, every man who knows more than I do is my
master.
I know very well that philosophy and metaphysics are nothing to the
great mass of physicians who pick up their science out of foreign
reviews, adding nothing themselves to what they read; nor, for that
matter, are they to most Spanish engineers, who are skilled in doing
sufficiently badly today what was done in England and Germany very well
thirty years ago; and the same thing is true of the apothecaries. The
practical is all that these people concede to exist, but how do they
know what is practical? Considering the matter from the practical point
of view, there can be no doubt but that civilization has attained a high
development wherever there have been great metaphysicisms, and then with
the philosophers have come the inventors, who between them are the glory
of mankind. Unamuno despises inventors, but in this case it is his
misfortune.
Pages:
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146