According to their own confessions, these missionaries, after three
centuries of preaching, have failed to eradicate those superstitions
incrustated in the conscience of the people. We must accept their
declaration as a faithful recognition of the failure of their
religious mission. I am not interested in, nor do I discuss,
the religious point of view, but the importance of superstition
in social life, its pernicious influence upon the evolution of
morality. What undoubtedly results from the narratives contained in
that literature which constituted the only reading of the people is
the promotion of ignorance spreading in a very effective manner all
the superstitions aforementioned and adding to them a wealth of errors
which unfortunately governs the mentality of the mass of the people.
Not only the so-called Indios the ones concerned; the sons of the
Spaniards of pure blood or those mixed with Indios as well as the
Chinese mestizos are also accused of these superstitions. All these,
all of us Filipinos, are included among the individuals infected with
the leprosy of superstition fomented by the absurd miracles of the
Novenas and it cannot be said that it is an evil particularly of the
Filipino race but also the inhabitants of the Philippines in general.
In order that education be useful it has to form in the individual
the sense of responsibility thru the free exercise of reason. The
fulfillment of duty shall be its objective and in order to obtain
this goal, it is highly necessary to develop the will in man with
which he shall fight the animal instincts, the sentimental impulses,
all that is contrary to the dictates of reason.
Logical mentality (mentalidad logica), to know what we should do and
to enable us to plan out a just route that we should follow; will
(voluntad) to enable us to exalt the dictates of reason above the
impulses of our own desires: such is the object of lay education,
the education in the so-called godless schools, here in the schools
of the Government as in the college of Beata Imelda directed by the
Dominican fathers under the norm of Japanese ideas translated in
imperative laws, situated in Taihoku, capital of Formosa.
The reading of the so-called miracles of the type that I have before
cited makes the impossible appear possible, thanks to mysterious
influences which are easy to secure, not thru industry, but simply thru
unworthy and low means and reproved by good morals such as humiliation,
adulation, and propitiation. A benefit is not asked or expected thru
some positive good that we do, thru fulfillment of duty out of which
results a positive good which is a right; resort is had by means
of favor, by gaining the benevolence of a saint, making him believe
that he is liked, adored, and admired, seeking to exalt his vanity
and, thru his mediation, gain the good will of God, not as a benefit
conferred directly to him who asks, but in consideration of the merits
of the mediator. Nothing can be imagined that is more immoral, more
primitive, more contemptible. The celestial court turns out to be a
court more corrupt than those of the autocrats condemned by history:
the court of the Khans, the Sultans, the Bysantine Emperors, Mungols,
Persians, Tartars, all the barbarians who have abused humanity and
who have personified injustice and justified revolution and massacres.
A society whose members expect everything thru favoritism does not
know what emulation is; when an individual finds a means as simple
as that offered in the Novenas to secure what he desires following
the line of least resistance, does not resort to the exercise of any
noble activity, and, consequently, cannot perfect his faculties nor use
them; an individual who expects to attain the absurd and improbable
cannot know the existence of immutable laws which rule the universe;
the individual who expects to secure what he wants thru the medium
of a celestial patron cannot conceive the God of Justice nor can he
really be a useful member of society.
Favor, propitiation, exception, protection, grace, preference,
predilection, are incompatible with what a God should be, with the
Ideal of civilization, with the supreme aspiration of humanity which
is Justice.