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I' XVIII II View of the Historical and Natural World I. PROVIDENTIAL OPTIMISM AND HISTORICAL PESSIMISM FOR Oviedo, everything is material for history. But his view of the world of men is altogether different from his view of the realms of nature. Natural history and "general" history are coupled even in the title of his major work. In a certain sense, as we have already seen, one is the necessary complement of the other. But just as they are unequal in their degree of certainty and therefore in historical worthiness, so Oviedo's attitude of mind toward the two fields varies. Possibly as a reflection of the abovementioned gnoseological premises or more probably as a result of an accurate approximative intuition of the New World and its role in universal history-an intuition rooted in the spirit of the new times, which were eagerly apprehending the external world and manifesting a certain incipient disgust at the bloody vanity of war-Oviedo might be said, in a word, to be pessimistic about "history" and optimistic about "nature." When he recalls his Christian faith Oviedo never fails to bow down before the inscrutable judgment of Divine Providence and sees the endless ups and downs of life as reflection of the avenging hand of supreme Justice; I but more often he openly expresses his bitterness at the way things go, at how easily the unworthy grow rich, while the deserving (including Oviedo) remain without "property," or lose what they have in the king's service. We have already seen how he has to invoke irrational Fortune to explain the fall of the wisest and wealthiest princes, and we shall see further on how he takes a certain lugubrious and malicious delight in telling us of the catastrophes that smite the powerful. So that while human history sometimes strikes him as tragic (see above, chap. XVII, sec. 21), there are other times when he finds it "diaboliI One example: "I tind this business quite inscrutable or unintelligible once one tric~ to look into it c1o~ely. because it has not been within anyone's power to prevent things turning out the way they did. For myself. I think that the sins of some and the unworthines; of others lay at the root of their misfortunes."' etc. (His/.. XLVIII, Proh.: PT. V. 213). 255 256 GONZALO FERNANDEZ DE OVIEDO cal": 'The condition of the world is such that evil never lacks favor or supporters, through the industry of the common adversary of mankind." 2 The wise come to grief, and the flower of knighthood perishes. The gold flows into the hands of those who least deserve it, and the "honors" are so unevenly distributed that the historian has to intervene to bring about a little posthumous justice. And then one begins to wonder whether Oviedo might not have been more than a little influenced by the radical pessimism of Saint Augustine's disciple, the Spaniard Orosius, the doleful and widely read author of that Moesta Mundi that was also known as the De miseria mundi, or "museum of the horrors of history." 3 The powerful can always find someone to agree with them. And Oviedo, as we shall see, finds something to criticize about everybody: the Indians, Spaniards, captains , priests, lawyers, foreigners, and even-on rare occasions-the sovereign himself. His chronic dissatisfaction often leads him into a sermonizing moralism, a moralism so universal that it achieves a certain negative impartiality, while at the same time making it impossible for him to understand the convergence of forces by which Spaniards and foreigners, sovereigns and soldiers, priests and Indians, willy-nilly and brawling with one another, succeeded in creating a new society in the land of America. The story of these endeavors, in which (for us at least) it is relatively easy to detect the arduous but triumphant march of civilization, a "manifest" if bloody destiny, a Vicoan "immanissima umanita," is however twisted in Oviedo's eyes into a meaningless series of adventures, sufferings, and slaughters. "I see that these changes of fortune and similar things of great importance do not always seem reasonable or what would seem just to men, but [the usual providential disclaimer1another higher definition and judgment of God that is beyond our understanding.... we cannot understand the ends for which things are done: and of God's providence it is not seemly that we should talk or think."4 2. NATURE MAGNIFIED If the world of men is absurd and the observer...

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