jects in his very presence. But he finally admits that Dulcinea is a fantastic and imaginary personage—and this no real madman would ever have done.[1]
In still other cases Don Quixote confesses that he has been mistaken, and is conscious, as he says, of the deceit into which he has fallen.[2] But whenever it suits his fancy he sees things as they are. The tavern is to him a tavern and not a castle; and he recognizes that the helmet of Mambrino is a barber’s basin. His principle, which should have revealed the seam of his fiction, is this (and it is the one truly idealistic motive in the whole book): that objects in themselves have no fast and inalienable character, but vary as different men behold them. His system might be defined as an instance of “the will to believe,” an anticipation, by three centuries, of the theories of pragmatism—unless it be a reflection, after twenty centuries, of the theories of Protagoras.
This view explains, moreover, the obvious common sense of Don Quixote. All whom he meets are astonished at the good sense of his discourse when it does not refer to matters of chivalry. They call him “a wise fool.” And at the end, sincere once more, he proclaims that he is not mad. Does he not openly confess that he in-
- ↑ Part II, Chapter XXXII.
- ↑ Instances in Part I, Chapter XLV, and Part II, Chapter XI.
