A y C, 183-195.

His thoughts cannot be termed a direct or explicit attack on possitivism and materialism, although they do suggest an exasperation with the critical spirit which those two movements engendered in the later years of the nineteenth century. It was, furthermore, the drive of both movements to concretize knowledge, to provide empirical verification, which presented such a threat to the Church, for example. Church leaders were not terribly sensitive to the advent of the industrial age in Spain, and were generally unprepared for the onslaught against religious faith inherent in the rise of social theory, particularly dialectical materialism and positivism. Before the challenge of empirical inquiries into the nature of being, the Church was able to muster scant intellectual forces. Her principal apologists after 1868 were the Thomists, who took their lead from Leo XIII's encyclical (1879) Aeterni patris. For more information, v thesummarized material in Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Historia de los heterodoxos españoles (Buenos Aires: Emece,1945), VII, 540-541. More detailed discussion may be found in the chapter, «The Social Role of the Church» in Goldman, Galdós' «Pueblo»...; v also the seminal book by Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution. Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (Boston: Beacon Press, 1960), 3rd. ed. (first ed originally published 1941), on the development of positivism.

Galdós' attitudes towards positivsm have been discussed by Gerald Gillespie, «Galdós and Positivism», a paper read at the Galdós Symposium, Mary Washington College, Fredericksburg, Va., April 21-22, 1967. Professor Gillespie's paper penetratingly demonstrates Galdós' fundamental mistrust of any formulaic vision of life, particularly one such as positivism which was fast becoming a denial of the things of the spirit. On the other hand, its reliance on physical evidence per se was not necessarily unacceptable to Galdós; rather, he was alienated by positivism's insistence that only physical evidence was valid. It was this, to Galdós' mind, which contributed to the undermining of the life of the spirit, a demise he laments in «Confusiones y paradojas». Temma E. Kaplan, «Positivism and Liberalism», pp. 254-266 of Clara E. Lida and Iris M. Zavala, eds., La Revolución de 1868. Historia, pensamiento, literatura (New York: Anaya - Las Américas, 1970), provides a general discussion of the nature of Spanish positivism and its reception in the intellectual and political communities; v also nn. 22, 27 and 43 below.

Both Gillespie and Rodolfo Cardona in his paper, «Galdós and Realism», also read at the Galdós Symposium, Mary Washington College, 1967, demonstrate repeatedly that Galdós was increasingly moving in te direction of a vision of the world which was characterized by complexity and contradiction. In the same article under discussion, Galdós also stated: «'Pesimista estás', me digo a mi mismo. Pero hay días en que no puede uno librarse de ver todas las cosas por el lado malo. El pesimismo suele ser resultado de la mayor lucidez de entendimiento. Cuando veis el aspecto oscuro de las cosas, es que vuestros ojos están llenos de claridad. (188)»

«El 1.º de mayo».

E.g., Regalado, p. 252.

«La moral y los negocios de Estado», 14 abril, 1887: PE-1, 299-310.

«[...] el litoral, donde la idea mercantil y el tino de las grandes Empresas se van abriendo camino, se emancipan al fin de este espiritualismo... (301)»

This middle ground between the totally spiritual and the totally material was a longstanding goal. For example, it may, as Brian J. Dendle convincingly suggests, have been the central preoccupation of Marianela («Shipwreck and Discovery. A Study of Imagery in Marianela», NM, LXXIV [1973], 326-332); v also nn. 21, 22 above, and n. 43 below.

E.g., «El 1.º de mayo»: «[...] que la cuestión social no es de fácil arreglo por los medios que conocemos, ni por los procedimientos políticos ni por los morales. (PE-2, 273)»

The lucid insights of Stephen Gilman and César Barja make this very clear in literary terms. Referring to Fortunata's final sacrifice, Gilman States («Narrative Presentation in Fortunata y Jacinta», RHM, XXXIV [1968], 288-30l): «The endless city as well as the haphazard 'chemin' of Fortunata's urban existence are redeemed from historical and experiential time by this one act. London, Paris, Moscow, Madrid with all their social injustice, sordid eroticism, stereotyped language, and governing materialism may be the principal milieux of 19th century novels (the physical incarnations of Galdós' 'hado social'), and the tormented lives of their inhabitants may be their subject. But if they are to be saved from the equally futile categories of fiction and non-fiction, if they are to attain lasting value, artistic and human, each must find a hero and a deed. (301)» While, according to Barja (Libros y autores modernos, 2nd. ed. [New York: Las Américas, 1964]), all Spaniards are exhorted to reform: «Sólo entre luchas y ruinas hay una orientación hacia el bien, un sentimiento de optimista liberación. Es el optimismo que resulta de la creencia en el progresivo perfeccionamiento de la humanidad. Hay que emancipar a ésta de las fuerzas que la esclavizan, del fanatismo de las ideas, sociales, religiosas y políticas; de la miseria económica y de la miseria intelectual. (351)» Barja's work, published originally in 1933, seems all but ignored today. This is indeed unfortunate, since many of his intultions, at leas tin this book, are original and provocative.