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Siete tratados (in English: Seven Treatises) is a collection of essays published by the Ecuadorian writer Juan Montalvo in two volumes, in 1882 and 1883, respectively. Of a marked philosophical character, it was his most famous work, thanks to which he received praise both in America and in Europe. For the most part, it was written between 1873 and 1875, while its author was outlawed in Ipiales, since, during that period, Gabriel García Moreno, his enemy who was known for repressing any attempt at opposition, governed Ecuador. It was published in Paris, with volume I being published in 1882, and volume II, in 1883.

The novel is written with such an abundance of historical quotations, parables and examples, that reading it is not easy: the reader may lose interest in the work because of the author's waste of erudition and his digressions, which are not always accurate.

Volume I contains: “De la nobleza”, “De la belleza en el género humano” and “Réplica a un sofista seudocatólico”. Volume II contains: “Del genio”, “Los héroes de la emancipación hispanoamericana”, “Los banquetes de los filósofos” and “El buscapié”, which later appeared as a prologue to Montalvo's novel Capítulos que se le olvidaron a Cervantes [es].

Content

De la nobleza (On Nobility)

Montalvo begins this treatise by affirming that, although all human races have great differences, their origin is unique. He takes Montesquieu and his study on the climatological influence on the development of the distinctive features of races as a reference, although he does not agree with his criterion that all racial differences are caused, simply, by changes in climate. This serves as an introduction to his study on nobility:

If the unique origin of the human species is in controversy, there would be nothing to hinder the inequality of the classes, and the nobility of blood would become a natural and essential prerogative of those who claim it and possess it with a just title. If we admit, however, a single birth for all mortals, the principle of nobility must be sought elsewhere.

He then goes on to study different notions of nobility throughout history. He begins by referring to “the founders of the first nobility of the world”, that is to say those whom “the flight of intelligence and the strength of the heart raised them to the first step on that high step that men have built to set themselves above others”, although he then notes that nobility comes from the plebs and returns to them, so he asks a rhetorical question: “How many descendants of kings today make up the dregs of the people in the nations of the earth?" He mentions that certain nobles had humble origins, as in the case of Themistocles in Athens and Camillus in Rome. He then states, “nobility, then, has noble origins, as born of talent and courage, the garments of human nature”. He then refers to the fact that nobility is sometimes based on wealth:

In our times, riches are the foundation of nobility: the world has passed through the tail of a comet and has lost its sight: now we do not see as the ancients saw, those venerable patriarchs who rode on asses and walked barefoot.

And he exclaims: “Ah, if only the rich were corrupted by wealth!" According to Montalvo, nobility can be acquired, and it can be lost in the same case: “Anyone who incurs in a case of less worth degrades his blood: the infamous cannot be noble. There is also incompatibility between lordship and dignity. Those who begin their enrichment with despicable lucre, dishonest income, are not and cannot be nobles."

In short, for Montalvo, true nobility, dignified nobility, the nobility that should be admired, praised and distinguished, is born of the human being and not with the human being; it is made, not inherited. According to his own words: “On these considerations was founded, no doubt, the wisest of the sects of philosophy, which was that of the Stoics, to establish this principle: There is no no nobility but that of the virtues.”

De la belleza en el género humano (On Beauty in the Human Race)

He begins this treatise by stating that it is impossible to define beauty: “Material beauty is that which sympathizes the eyes and fills the heart, we might say; but these are effects of beauty, and not beauty itself.” He then analyzes its relativity: each people, each race, each historical epoch and even each age has its model of beauty.

On the other hand, for Montalvo, there cannot be beauty without virtue: “Unfortunately, beauty is not the sister of virtue, not even of goodness. If it were not to put an impious blemish, I would be able to affirm that it would have been better if, without virtue, we did not recognize beauty of any lineage."

To conclude, in his opinion beauty is not only material; for the believing soul, for the spirit that longs for perfection, there is the beauty of God. This treatise, because of the metaphors and descriptions it contains, is perhaps the most artistically accomplished of all.

Réplica a un sofista (Reply to a Sophist)

In book number 1 of his magazine El Cosmopolita, Montalvo, commenting on his first visit to Rome, made references to the ancient history of the city, presenting it as a model of morality and virtue. This annoyed certain Ecuadorian Catholics, who claimed that virtue only existed within the Catholic religion. Thus, this treatise was written as a defense to the accusations of his detractors, who called him a heretic, anti-Catholic and anticlerical. In it, Montalvo responds categorically that he is neither heretic, nor anticlerical, but a believer and a denouncer of the bad clergy.

In his opinion, only fanaticism and dullness can put an abyss between ancient and modern virtue, between pagan and Christian virtue: “I am well satisfied that pure and clean virtue, virtue of heaven, is in the Christian law, the law of God; but if the ancient Greeks and Romans practiced a great part of it, shall we say that it was not virtue, because the Redeemer had not yet come into the world?”

Instead of tending to move the world forward, Montalvo notes that, if it were up to him, he would return to the past. In a trope, he tells us that “human society is a ladder” and that “there cannot be a ladder without steps in human society if we suppress social classes, human society cannot exist”. From these judgments, the inability to look into the future and suggest changes is clear: the splendor of the past and the darkness of the present are constant.

Sometimes in this treatise, he refers to the new European social and ideological currents, although he does not elaborate on them, as in the following case:

To blame ancient Rome for the invention of socialism is the same as blaming it for slavery. Socialism, by a mysterious enchainment of ideas and things, has its cradle in despotism, who would believe it; and it could not, by the law of nature, have been born in a people that adored liberty, cultivated it and enjoyed it as its greatest, truest and most present good.

On the subject of the bad clergy, he attacks them as simoniacs and aphrodisiacs, giving an example of what a “good priest” is with the episode of the priest of Santa Engracia. Although the attack is general, the quotations individualize certain members of the clergy who serve as prototypes: the priest who denied burial for the corpse of his brother, and the one who followed with whips certain women who asked him to lower some part of the fees for a burial. In no other treatise or writing is Montalvo more concerned than in this one to reiterate his belief in God and the commandments. He ends the treatise by saying:

I could honor myself in silence with respect to the charge, as gratuitous as it is reckless, of affirming that I am an enemy of Jesus Christ, I who cannot hear his name without a delicate and virtuous shudder of spirit, which transports me as if by magic to the time and life of that heavenly man. Enemies, Jesus Christ does not have them: bad Christians, Catholics of bad faith are the ones who have them.

Del genio (On Genius)

He begins this treatise by defending himself from the attacks of a language purist who had criticized him for using the Gallicism "genio", when Spanish has the word "ingenio". For Montalvo, there are two different concepts that must be expressed with two different words, and to explain what "genio" is, he recalls that in ancient Greek philosophy, particularly in Aristotelian philosophy, there was the word “entelechy”, the same word that “sometimes means God, sometimes means form: when it is poured by movement, when by abyss: now it is immortality, then it will indicate hell”. He then explains that something similar happens with the word “genio”: “The entelechy of the ancients has today one as heir of the vast, high, deep, unknown and mysterious: this is the 'genio'”.

He asserts that "genio", as a creative force, is not a universal faculty. "Genio" is a very rare gift “with which God improves the predestined of his love”, while “'ingenio' is talent, intelligence distributed”. He says:

"Ingenio" may be modest, humble, and even low: "genio" is sublime, always sublime; and sublimity does not exist without great daring, unanswerable force, irresistible impetus. "Ingenio" is judicious, often timid: its flight does not translimate the space of an apocate sensibility: "genio" is agitated in a kind of celestial dementia, it flaps its wings impetuously and, with its eyes on fire, it shoots up.

Throughout his essay, Montalvo reviews ancient and modern history to cite "genios" and men of "ingenio", both auspicious and unlucky.