Some hundreds must have got in and
out during the last fifty miles!"
In other words, the wise man has permitted eye-openers to rain upon him
their full, beneficent, and sacramental influence. And if a man in
travelling will always maintain his mind ready for what he really sees
and hears, he will become a whole nest of Columbuses discovering a
perfectly interminable series of new worlds.
A man can only talk of what he himself knows. Let me give further
examples. I had always heard until I visited the Pyrenees how French
civilization (especially in the matter of roads, motors, and things like
that) went up to the "Spanish" frontier and then stopped dead. It
doesn't. The change is at the Aragonese frontier. On the Basque third of
the frontier the people are just as active and fond of wealth, and of
scraping of stone and of cleanliness, and of drawing straight lines, to
the north as to the south of it. They are all one people, as
industrious, as thrifty, and as prosperous as the Scots. So are the
Catalans one people, and you get much the same sort of advantages and
disadvantages (apart from the effect of government) with the Catalans to
the north as with the Catalans to the south of the border.
So with religion. I had thought to find the Spanish churches crowded. I
found just the contrary. It was the French churches that were crowded,
not the Spanish; and the difference between the truth--what one really
sees and hears--and the printed legend happens to be very subtly
illustrated in this case of religion.
Pages:
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167