Book V Intellectual Evolution
Spain founded universities in America, where she exercised a true monopoly of ideas. The Revolution in her colonies was inspired by the doctrines of the French Encyclopædists. Since then—that is, during the whole of the nineteenth century—the metropolis has been losing the greater portion of her ancient intellectual privileges. Political and literary ideas, romanticism and liberalism, faith in reason and poetic enthusiasm, all these have been imported from France. It is interesting to study the results of this lasting influence in philosophy and letters.