The Indolence of the Filipino
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