Those who believe in the absurd miracle (milagreria absurda), protector
of the fools, accomplice of the lazy, of the gamblers, of thieves,
of all who, thru its means, seek to secure what they desire--those
are the criminals that fill our jails and who die in the gallows;
those are the ones, who, armed with their anting-anting, talisman,
rosary, scapulary, bones of saints, or shark's teeth, fight with
the police, commit outrages, upset order, confident in their triumph
because of the protection of their celestial pintakasi. Such is the
product not of the schools without god but of god without schools,
impossible and paradoxical, whose power manifests itself in capricious
methods and in the exercise of prestidigitation. Those individuals
are in truth the natural products of that superstition preached,
diffused, and presented to the ignorance of people who have come
to the point of fearing neither God nor devil and who know that the
infernal punishment only is meted to him who does not wear a rosary
around his neck or does not confide in a pintakasi, who guarantees
eternal salvation because God does not permit that the worshiper of
one of His devotees be condemned.
What kind of citizen can an individual be in society who laughs at
punishment using the easy means of a celestial lawyer. How can terrors
of hell infuse fear in him when he knows that thru the medium of a
powerful lawyer, God finds himself obliged (forzado) to pardon him. And
when a man knows the way of evading divine justice, it is clear that,
in order for him to escape human justice, he will resort to appealing
to the mercy of the judge, to evade compliance with the law, to the
non-fulfillment of any duty, and to live only to enjoy his rights;
he will resort, in dealing with human authorities, to the use of the
same methods of propitiation, adulation, prevarication, humiliation,
and deception which dominated the same God and triumphed over the
power of the devil!
Never will it be possible for a superstitious man, especially if he is
of the type that we have just analyzed, become a useful citizen. Such
is the type which unfortunately is the product of an education of
three centuries...!
The parochial schools (escuelas religiosas) have given their fruit;
the lay schools (laicas) have also borne fruitage. The youths who
graduate from the latter are undoubtedly not without defects; but they
are not poisoned or forever led astray by that brutalizing superstition
sown by native and foreign impostors. None of those youths will assail
ruthlessly an ugly old woman mistaking her for a devil; he will not
dream of flying in the air launched like a balloon by an army of
devils. None shall believe that a piece of meat shall be transformed
into arms, legs, and heads as a mass offered to a pintakasi progresses;
much less can such youth conceive a Jesus Christ that would weaken
at the sight of a chest that his mother Virgin Mary would show to
remind him of his weak memory of God would forget; nor will he excuse
himself of a wrong committed against a companion of the other sex on
the pretext that he does not have with him the girdle of the Angelic
Militia; much less will he believe that, in spite of a criminal life,
he will be able to secure eternal salvation provided only he has
taken the precaution of repeating at every turn the invocation of
the so-called Trinity on Earth.
That lay education will not produce individuals who trust in protection
or recommendation to progress and triumph on earth. The lay education
is wholly democratic and will not be capable of committing the same
faults of those who, by not following their education, seek to employ
in the affairs of life those means recommended in the Novenas in
order to obtain what is desired by means of the help of the powerful,
secured by means of requests, protestations of love, and promise of
eternal devotion.
That mental conformation created by the diffusion of this superstitious
spirit is an obstacle, an insuperable barrier set up against the
development of the moral sense. We shall sow principles of morality
as the farmer who sows in the fields the seeds properly selected which
will not grow unless the soil is adequate. Sane morals is founded upon
the basis of reason; when this foundation is lacking, the moral taught
will be like a tree that is rootless and lifeless. It is not possible
that a school without god (escuela sin Dios) or the one with god can
make the seed of morals grow upon a soil prepared by the school of
superstition, of magic, and of sorcery. We have to prepare the soil
cultivating reason and creating the logical sense.
I will only insist on things which only need to be presented before
our common sense to be judged as they merit.