Man is by his nature religious, intelligent, and free. When these three characteristics, which constitute his nature, develop harmoniously, man achieves his highest degree of perfection and felicity. When these three elements do not develop harmoniously in him, a feverish agitation oppresses him and an indefinable and severe pain torments him.
To prove our theory, we invoke the testimony of history. When the element of intelligence in a man dominates the other elements, that man is a philosopher. When the sentiment of liberty inflames him, he is a warrior, and finally, when faith burns in his heart and consumes him, he is a monk.
In vain will one search history for other types of great and sublime characters; there are no others. Man, to be great, to live in posterity, has to be notable in war, religion, or letters. He has to be religious, intelligent, or free: a monk, a philosopher, or a warrior. Let us erase these three categories from the history of the world, and the world, destitute of its heroes, destitute of its philosophers, and destitute of its martyrs, would be left destitute of its glory.
The uniting in a single man of these three sublime characteristics has been realized only once in the world. Only once have the centuries witnessed a man whose voice was the intelligence of the world and the confusion of the wise, the most intelligent among the intelligent. A man who announced with his coming the kingdom of faith, who inflamed with his holy fire tepid hearts, the most religious among religious. There was a man, finally, who, when his mission was accomplished, resigned himself to a voluntary death, the freest of free men. Behold the man completely great, the representative man, the beautiful ideal of the whole of humanity: Ecce homo.
* Reprinted from “Religion, Liberty and Intelligence” El Porvenir, Tuesday, June 13, 1837, in Donoso Cortés: Readings in Political Theory, selected and edited with introduction by R.A. Herrera, Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University, 2007, pp. 15-16
