Part 4

The very limited training in the home, the tyrannical and sterile education of the rare centers of learning, that blind subordination of the youth to one of greater age, influence the mind so that a man may not aspire to excel those who preceded him but must merely be content to go along with or march behind them. Stagnation forcibly results from this, and as he who devotes himself merely to copying divests himself of other qualities suited to his own nature, he naturally becomes sterile; hence decadence. Indolence is a corollary derived from the lack of stimulus and of vitality.

That modesty infused into the convictions of every one, or, to speak more clearly, that insinuated inferiority, a sort of daily and constant depreciation of the mind so that, it may not be raised to the regions of light, deadens the energies, paralyzes all tendency toward advancement, and at the least struggle a man gives up without fighting. If by one of those rare accidents, some wild spirit, that is, some active one, excels, instead of his example stimulating, it only causes others to persist in their inaction. 'There's one who will work for us: let's sleep on!' say his relatives and friends. True it is that the spirit of rivalry is sometimes awakened, only that then it awakens with bad humor in the guise of envy, and instead of being a lever for helping, it is an obstacle that produces discouragement.

Nurtured by the example of anchorites of a contemplative and lazy life, the natives spend theirs in giving their gold to the Church in the hope of miracles and other wonderful things. Their will is hypnotized: from childhood they learn to act mechanically, without knowledge of the object, thanks to the exercises imposed upon them from the tenderest years of praying for whole hours in an unknown tongue, of venerating things that they do not understand, of accepting beliefs that are not explained to them to having absurdities imposed upon them, while the protests of reason are repressed. Is it any wonder that with this vicious dressage of intelligence and will the native, of old logical and consistent--as the analysis of his past and of his language demonstrates--should now be a mass of dismal contradictions? That continual struggle between reason and duty, between his organism and his new ideals, that civil war which disturbs the peace of his conscience all his life, has the result, of paralyzing all his energies, and aided by the severity of the climate, makes of that eternal vacillation, of the doubts in his brain, the origin of his indolent disposition.

"You can't know more than this or that old man!" "Don't aspire to be greater than the curate!" "You belong to an inferior race!" "You haven't any energy!" This is what they tell the child, and as they repeat it so often, it has perforce to become engraved on his mind and thence mould and pervade all his actions. The child or youth who tries to be anything else is blamed with vanity and presumption; the curate ridicules him with cruel sarcasm, his relatives look upon him with fear, strangers regard him with great compassion. No forward movement! Get back in the ranks and keep in line!

With his spirit thus moulded the native falls into the most pernicious of all routines: routine not planned, but imposed and forced. Note that the native himself is not, naturally inclined to routine, but his mind is disposed to accept all truths, just as his house is open to all strangers. The good and the beautiful attract him, seduce and captivate him, although, like the Japanese, he often exchanges the good for the evil, if it appears to him garnished and gilded. What he lacks is in the first place liberty to allow expansion to his adventuresome spirit, and good examples, beautiful prospects for the future. It is necessary that his spirit, although it may be dismayed and cowed by the elements and the fearful manifestation of their mighty forces, store up energy, seek high purposes, in order to struggle against obstacles in the midst of unfavorable natural conditions. In order that he may progress it is necessary that a revolutionary spirit, so to speak, should boil in his veins, since progress necessarily requires change; it implies the overthrow of the past, there deified, by the present; the victory of new ideas over the ancient and accepted ones. It will not be sufficient to speak to his fancy, to talk nicely to him, nor that the light illuminate him like the ignis fatuus that leads travelers astray at night; all the flattering promises of the fairest hopes will not suffice, so long as his spirit is not free, his intelligence not respected.

The reasons that originate in the lack of national sentiment are still more lamentable and more transcendental.

Convinced by the insinuation of his inferiority, his spirit harassed by his education, if that brutalization of which we spoke above can be called education, in that exchange of usages and sentiments among different nations, the Filipino, to whom remain only his susceptibility and his poetical imagination, allows himself to be guided by his fancy and his self-love. It is sufficient that the foreigner praise to him the imported merchandise and run down the native product for him to hasten to make the change, without reflecting that everything has its weak side and the most sensible custom is ridiculous in the eyes of those who do not follow it. They have dazzled him with tinsel, with strings, of colored glass beads, with noisy rattles, shining mirrors and other trinkets, and he has given in return his gold, his conscience, and even his liberty. He changed his religion for the external practices of another cult; the convictions and usages derived from his climate and needs, for other usages and other convictions that developed under another sky and another inspiration. His spirit, well-disposed toward everything that looks good to him, was then transformed, at the pleasure of the nation that forced upon him its God and its laws, and as the trader with whom he dealt did not bring a cargo of useful implements of iron, hoes to till the fields, but stamped papers, crucifixes, bulls and prayer-books; as he did not have for ideal and prototype the tanned and vigorous laborer, but the aristocratic lord, carried in a luxurious litter, the result was that the imitative people became bookish, devout, prayerful; it acquired ideas of luxury and ostentation, without thereby improving the means of its subsistence to a corresponding degree.

The lack of national sentiment brings another evil, moreover, which is the absence of all opposition to measures prejudicial to the people and the absence of any initiative in whatever may redound to its good. A man in the Philippines is only an individual, he is not a member of a nation. He is forbidden and denied the right of association, and is therefore weak and sluggish. The Philippines are an organism whose cells seem to have no arterial system to irrigate it or nervous system to communicate its impressions; these cells must, nevertheless, yield their product, get it where they can: if they perish, let them perish. In the view of some this is expedient so that a colony may be a colony; perhaps they are right, but not to the effect that a colony may flourish.

The result of this is that if a prejudicial measure is ordered, no one protests; all goes well apparently until later the evils are felt. Another blood-letting, and as the organism has neither nerves nor voice the physician proceeds in the belief that the treatment is not injuring it. It needs a reform, but as it must not speak, it keeps silent and remains with the need. The patient wants to eat, it wants to breathe the fresh air, but as such desires may offend the susceptibility of the physician who thinks that he has already provided everything necessary, it suffers and pines away from fear of receiving scolding, of getting another plaster and a new blood-letting, and so on indefinitely.

In addition to this, love of peace and the horror many have of accepting the few administrative positions which fall to the Filipinos on account of the trouble and annoyance these cause them places at the head of the people the most stupid and incapable men, those who submit to everything, those who can endure all the caprices and exactions of the curate and of the officials. With this inefficiency in the lower spheres of power and ignorance and indifference in the upper, with the frequent changes and the eternal apprenticeships, with great fear and many administrative obstacles, with a voiceless people that has neither initiative nor cohesion, with employees who nearly all strive to amass a fortune and return home, with inhabit, ants who live in great hardship from the instant they begin to breathe, create prosperity, agriculture and industry, found enterprises and companies, things that still hardly prosper in free and well-organized communities.

Yes, all attempt is useless that does not spring from a profound study of the evil that afflicts us. To combat this indolence, some have proposed increasing the native's needs and raising the taxes. What has happened? Criminals have multiplied, penury has been aggravated. Why? Because the native already has enough needs with his functions of the Church, with his fiestas, with the public offices forced on him, the donations and bribes that he has to make so that he may drag out his wretched existence. The cord is already too taut.

We have heard many complaints, and every day we read in the papers about the efforts the government is making to rescue the country from its condition of indolence. Weighing its plans, its illusions and its difficulties, we are reminded of the gardener who tried to raise a tree planted in a small flower-pot. The gardener spent his days tending and watering the handful of earth, he trimmed the plant frequently, he pulled at it to lengthen it and hasten its growth, he grafted on it cedars and oaks, until one day the little tree died, leaving the man convinced that it belonged to a degenerate species, attributing the failure of his experiment to everything except the lack of soil and his own ineffable folly.

Without education and liberty, that soil and that sun of mankind, no reform is possible, no measure can give the result desired. This does not mean that we should ask first for the native the instruction of a sage and all imaginable liberties, in order then to put a hoe in his hand or place him in a workshop; such a pretension would be an absurdity and vain folly. What we wish is that obstacles be not put in his way, that the many his climate and the situation of the islands afford be not augmented, that instruction be not begrudged him for fear that when he becomes intelligent he may separate from the colonizing nation or ask for the rights of which he makes himself worthy. Since some day or other he will become enlightened, whether the government wishes it or not, let his enlightenment be as a gift received and not as conquered plunder. We desire that the policy be at once frank and consistent, that is, highly civilizing, without sordid reservations, without distrust, without fear or jealousy, wishing the good for the sake of the good, civilization for the sake of civilization, without ulterior thoughts of gratitude, or else boldly exploiting, tyrannical and selfish without hypocrisy or deception, with a whole system well-planned and studied out for dominating by compelling obedience, for commanding to get rich, for getting rich to be happy. If the former, the government may act with the security that some day or other it will reap the harvest and will find a people its own in heart and interest; there is nothing like a favor for securing the friendship or enmity of man, according to whether it be conferred with good will or hurled into his face and bestowed upon him in spite of himself. If the logical and regulated system of exploitation be chosen, stifling with the jingle of gold and the sheen of opulence the sentiments of independence in the colonies, paying with its wealth for its lack of liberty, as the English do in India, who moreover leave the government to native rulers, then build roads, lay out highways, foster the freedom of trade; let the government heed material interests more than the interests of four orders of friars; let it send out intelligent employees to foster industry; just judges, all well paid, so that they be not venal pilferers, and lay aside all religious pretext. This policy has the advantage in that while it may not lull the instincts of liberty wholly to sleep, yet the day when the mother country loses her colonies she will at least have the gold amassed and not the regret of having reared ungrateful children.

1. Sancianco y Goson, Gregorio: El progreso de Filipinas. Estudios económicos, administrativos y políticos. Parte económica. Madrid, Imp. de la Vda. de J M. Perez, 1881 Pp XIV-260.

An eminent student of Philippine life and history, James A. LeRoy in his "The Philippines, 1860-1898--Some comment and bibliographical notes" published in volume 52 of Blair and Robertson, Philippine Islands 1493-1898, praises this book (p. 141) as "especially valuable on administrative matters just prior to the revision of the fiscal regime in connection with the abolition of the government tobacco monopoly", and for its "data on land, commerce, and industry"

2. Before 1590, one of the Spanish officers in the Philippines, commenting on the climate of the Islands, declared, with considerable acumen, that Europeans could stand life and work here if they observed continence in regard to the use of alcoholic beverages.

3. See Morga's "Report of conditions in the Philippines (June 8, 1598)" in Blair and Robertson vol. 10. pp. 75-80, in which various abuses of the friars are set forth. This should be compared with the following pages of the same relation (pp. 89-90) on secular affairs, from which it will be recognized that the condition was not so much the resultant of one class as of Spanish national character. Cf. also, Anda y Salazar B. and R, vol. 50, pp. 137-190; and Le Gentil, Voyage (Paris, 1779-81), vol. 1, pp. 183-191. It would be hardly fair not to call to mind that the Filipinos are debtors to the friars in many ways, and the Filipinos themselves should be the last to forget this. For a good exposition from the friar point of view, see Zamora, Las Corporaciones-Religiosas en Filipinas: Valladolid, 1901.

See also Mallat, Les Philippines (Paris, 1846), vol. 1, pp. 374-389.

4. The history of the Philippines is full of references to Chinese who came here for the reasons assigned by Rizal. The antiquarian will be interested in consulting a small work entitled Notes on the Malay Archipelago and Malacca, compiled from Chinese sources, by W. P. Groeneveldt.

5 See B. and R., vol 34, pp. 183-191 for a description of the early Chinese trade in the Philippines, also translated by Hirth from Chinese sources, but evidently not the same as referred to by Rizal,

6. This citation is translated directly from the original Italian Ms. Rizal's account is seen to be slightly different and arises from the fact that he made use of Amoretti's printed version of the Ms., which is wrong in many particulars. Amoretti attempted to change the original Ms. into modern Italian, with disastrous result. It is to be regretted that Walls y Merino followed the same garbled text, in his Primer viaje alrededor del Mundo (Madrid, 1899).

Dr. Antonio de Morga's book is perhaps the most famous of all the early books treating of the Philippines. Its full title is as follows: "Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas: Dirigido á Don Cristoval Gomez de Sandoval y Rojas, Duque de Cea, Mexico, En casa de Geronymo Balli, 1609." The original edition is very rare, and is worth almost its weight in gold. The manuscript circulated for some years before the date of publication.

The second Spanish edition of the work was published by Rizal himself, who was always a sincere admirer of the book. It bears the following title-page: "Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas por el Doctor Antonio de Morga. Obra publicada en Mejico el año de 1609 nuevamente sacada á luz y anotada por José Rizal y precedida de un prólogo del Prof. Fernando Blumentritt. Paris, Libreria de Garnier Hermanos, 1890." Shortly before Rizal began work on his edition, a Spanish scholar, Justo Zaragoza, began the publication of a new edition of Morga. The book was reprinted, but the notes, prologue, and life of Morga which Zargoza had intended to insert, were never completed because of that editor's death. Only two copies of this edition, so far as known, were ever bound, one of which belongs to the Ayer collection in Chicago, and the other by the Tabacalera purchase to the Philippine Library, in Manila. Still one other Spanish edition has appeared, namely: "Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas por el Dr. Antonio de Morga. Nueva edición enriquecida con los escritos inéditos del mismo autor ilustrada con numerosas notas que amplian el texto y prologada extensamente por W. E. Retana, Madrid, Libreria General de Victoriano Suarez, Editor, 1909." Retana adds a life of Morga and numerous documents written by him. An English edition was published as follows: "The Philippine Islands, Moluccas, Siam, Cambodia, Japan, and China. at the close of the sixteenth century. By Antonio de Morga. Translated from the Spanish, with notes and a preface, and a letter from Luis Vaez de Torres, describing his voyage through the Torres Straits, by the Hen. Henry E. J. Stanley, London, Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1868". However, Stanley's translation is poor, and parts of passages are not translated at all. [It was this edition then in preparation by the Hakluyt Society, which Sir John Bowring, a director of the society, mentioned on his visit to Rizal's uncle in Biñan, so that to make the book available to Spaniards and Filipinos became an ambition from childhood with Rizal.-C.] A second English translation appears in B. and R. vols. 15 and 16. A separate copy of this translation was also published in a very limited edition, with the title: "History of the Philippine Islands from their discovery by Magellan in 1521 to the beginning of the XVII century; with descriptions of Japan, China and adjacent countries, by Dr. Antonio de Morga, alcalde of criminal causes, in the Royal Audiencia of Nueva España, and counsel for the Holy Office of the inquisition. Completely translated into English, edited and annotated by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson. Cleveland, Ohio, The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1907." See B. and R. vols. 9-12 for other documents by Morga, and vol. 53 (or Robertson's Bibliography of the Philippine Islands, Cleveland, 1908), for bibliographical details regarding Morga and titles to documents. Perhaps the most famous of all his writings outside of his book is his relation mentioned ante, note 3.

7. Published at London in 1783. See p. 346.

8. See B. and R., vol. 4, pp. 221, 222, for an old boatsong.

9. Colin's Labor evangelica, published in Madrid, 1663; a new edition, in three volumes, and greatly enriched by notes and was published by Pablo Pastells, S. J. (Barcelona, 1900-1902).

10. See B. and R., vol. 33, pp. 233-235. The original says the ransom included 150 chickens; hence 450, an error due again to Amoretti.

11, Conquistas do las Islas Fillpinas (Madrid, 1698). There is no doubt of the frequency of inter-island trade among the peoples of the Philippines at an early period. Trade was stimulated by the very fact that the Malay peoples, except those who have been driven into the mountainous interiors, are by their very nature a seafaring people. The fact of an inter-island traffic is indicative of a culture above that possessed by a people in the barbarian stage of culture. Of course, there was considerable Chinese trade as well throughout the islands.

12. This estimate is somewhat high. A writer in speaking of the population of Manila, the metropolis of the Philippines then as now, about 1570 says that its population scarcely reached 80,000, instead of the 200,000 reported.

13 Licentiate Pedro de Rojas, of the Manila Audiencia, in a letter to Felipe II, June 30, 1586--Vol.6, pp. 265-274 says (p. 270): "If there were no trade with China, the citizens of these islands, would be richer; for the natives if they had not so many tostons, would pay their tributes in the articles which they produce, and which are current, that is, cloths, lampotes, cotton, and gold.--all of which have great value in Nueva España. These they cease to produce because of the abundance of silver; and what is worse and entails more loss upon your Majesty, is that they do not, as formerly, work the mines and take out gold". The old records contains numerous references to the decline of the native industries of the Philippines after the arrival of the Spaniards and the increase of Chinese trade.

14. See ante, note 13.

15. The decrease of population among native people in the Philippines after the arrival of the Spaniards compares in no degree with what occurred in America. A most distressing picture of conditions in the Philippines is given by Bishop Domingo de Salazar in his relation written about 1583 (see B. & R., vol 5, pp. 210-255. See especially p. 212.) It is well to balance Salazar's account with those of others

(A "tributary" was generally reckoned as five persons, one "tribute" being required for each adult male. Hence "tributaries" and "families" may here be taken to mean about the same number,--D.)

16. The forced labor required by the Spaniards in shipbuilding formed one of the legitimate causes of complaint among the people almost from the beginning.

17. See ante, note 15, also note 16.

18. The early friars, although many of them fell into some of the very faults which they condemned, inveighed boldly against the cruelty of the Spaniards. Doubtless their attitude did encourage their converts to withdraw from industry to a certain degree.

19. See B. & R, vol. 4, pp. 148-303.

20 See B & R., vol. 6, for early accounts of Chinese trade and Spanish measures affecting it The hostility between Spaniards and Portuguese enters largely into the question. The effects of the deplorably bad economics of Spain in its trade relations are still felt in the Peninsula.

21. See ante, note 20.

22. See ante, note 20. The arrival and departure of the annual galleon were times of activity, but otherwise Manila was a dull town, with little industry. The Chinese usurped all the petty trade.

23 It is to the credit, of the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del Pais de Filipinas, founded by the energetic governor Basco y Vargas in 1781, that it extended its many-sided interests to the destruction of the devastating hordes of locusts that visit the Philippines so frequently.

24 The Spanish policy remained to the end one of exclusion, and the privileges granted were almost all because of coercion, and the penetrating force of modern ideas.

25. A loose use of the word "monk", which is properly used of a cloistered ecclesiastic who does not leave his convent. "Friar" would be a more exact term. The Benedictines are monks; the Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans, and Recollects, are friars.

26. This was the Filipino chemist Anacleto del Rosario, whom Rizal rightly praises.