178 Hispanic America
Let us consider, first, the humanistic movement. The
Venezuelan Andrés Bello began the scientific study of the
language by writing the best grammar; Rafael Baralt
depurated the language by pointing out the Gallicisms;
Rufino José Cuervo, in his dictionary of regimens, erected
a most noteworthy monument to Spanish philology; Miguel
Antonio Caro was not inferior, as an essayist and critic, to
Spain’s best masters; and the prose of Juan Montalvo con-
tinued the strain of Cervantes.
It is interesting to observe the correspondence between
the intellectual movement and the emancipative movement
in Spanish America. To the emancipative movement in the
north led by Greater Colombia, belonged the humanistic
culture of which I have already spoken. Another move-
ment for emancipation sprang up in the south, led by
Argentina, and actuated not only by idealistic motives,
but also by economic factors. To these movements corre-
sponded a social thought and political realism that we
must now consider. The Argentine Domingo F.
Sarmiento, with the insight of genius, described the social
reality of his country in his celebrated works of Facundo
and Recuerdos de provincia, and he attempted to write
a true account of social conditions in Conflictos y
armonias de las razas en America. By the power of
his intuition of genius, Sarmiento acquired the stand-
point of Buckle and Taine and he formulated principles
and observations that no sociologist treating of Ameri-
can questions may ignore. Alberdi discovered the true
basis of the Argentine constitution and he pointed out the
cause of political crises in America, attributing them to lack
of population and the weakness of the national economic
organism. Sarmiento and Alberdi, in spite of their differ-
ences and their hostility to each other, were the professors