At the turn of the century a young Spanish philosopher, home from the German universities, used to walk the stone terrace before the great Escorial palace proclaiming to himself: "I am I plus my circumstances." Looking up at granite reminders of bygone imperial glory and reflecting on the fresh memory of Spain's ignominious defeat in Cuba, José Ortega y Gasset decided that the circumstances of Spanish life demanded drastic overhaul. For 300 years, he wrote, Spain had been sinking into a "long coma of egotism and idiocy . . . Today we...
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