FILIPINO INDOLENCE
The Indio that had startled the Spanish colony in Manila by daring to call the Philippines “my fatherland” proved his loyalty to the country he adored by serving it with a discriminating zeal. He would have been more picturesque if he had been well galvanized by Chauvin, but less useful. His mind, though powerful, could work in only one way, which was in orderly motions. These prevented him from dwelling so much on his country’s wrongs that he forgot his country’s faults. For this reason, and because he could have no heated bearings in his mental processes, he was Filipinas’s greatest asset. In “Noli Me Tangere” he showed that he understood well the native defects (products of the System) and would spare them no more than he spared the friars. But it was for his countrymen’s good that he rebuked them, like a wise father correcting his children; and whatever might be his employments he never forgot two great vital visions, Filipinas fast bound in the prison-house and education tardily on its way to set her free.
With the same purpose of helping this good angel the sooner to smite the prison locks, he now set himself an unusual task. He was to master French; not after the fashion of the schools, for that he already had, nor for the mere pleasure of acquiring it, but to be able to write in it as if it were his native tongue. [[182]]He knew what he was about in this; if his novels should fail to arouse the Filipinos he was determined to appeal to Europe in behalf of his country, and he conceived that he could best do this in French. Therefore with indefatigable ardor he pursued the French verb and the other phenomena of Gallic speech into their remotest fastnesses. He took what might be called post-postgraduate work in these arid excursions, employing the help of unusual scholars and including colloquial French with French of the Academy. When we come upon the fact that at the end of these labors he was able to prepare as a text-book for French students a volume of French exercises[1] we may perceive that his success was out of the ordinary.
In Paris when the exposition of 1889 came on he was struck with the fact that in that vast and imposing procession of the children of earth his own people, whom he felt and knew to be as worthy as the others, had no place. Therefore he organized an international league to make known to the world the facts about the Filipinos and to refute the slanders that Spanish writers had sown thickly in European literature. He called this society the “Association Internationale des Philippinistes.” Dr. Blumentritt was president, Dr. Rost vice-president, and Dr. Planchut of Paris one of the directors.[2] If Rizal was a nationalist, he was also an internationalist; a fact that must be already apparent in these annals. No doubt, being wise about [[183]]other things, he was not deceived into thinking that internationalism could come by any other than the nationalist route. The first of the declared objects of his Association Internationale was to summon an international congress. Others were to study the Philippines historically and scientifically, to create a Philippine library and museum of Philippine objects, to publish books on Philippine topics, and to arouse public interest in these objects.
That the world looked with some disdain upon his people, that under the spell of the Spanish pen it ignored the honorable record of Philippine culture and the stirring Philippine history, were thorns that gave his mind no rest. None knew so well as he that this misprision was rankly unjust. In the face of almost universal opinion in Europe, he knew that the Malay mind, though different, was not inferior; he knew that what it wanted was no more than the sunlight and free air. In all ways the general verdict was askew: the Filipinos were not even innately lazy, as hundreds of writers had asserted, hundreds still repeated, and doubtless other hundreds will continue to parrot for years to come. He knew that lazy people could never have made the progress the Filipino had made before the evil day of the Spanish flag. The respect he had for the latent powers of his countrymen sprang from research and not from prejudice. It was true enough, but not a truth that he could keep refrigerated in scientific abstractions. It burned and struggled in him like something fighting to get free, and he relieved himself of an intolerable protest by writing (for “La Solidaridad”) a brochure on the subject. [[184]]
“[The Indolence of the Filipino]”[3] it is called, and, if he had written nothing else, thoughtful men would still admire him for the cool, masterly marshaling of his reasonings in this. He purposes to deal with the truth. “Let us calmly examine the facts,” he says in beginning, “using on our part all the impartiality of which a man is capable who is convinced that there is no redemption except upon solid bases of virtue.” Two pages later he says:
Examining well, then, all the scenes and all the men that we have known from childhood, and examining the life of our country, we believe that indolence does exist there. The Filipinos, who can measure up with the most active peoples in the world, will doubtless not repudiate this admission, for it is true that in the Philippines one works and struggles against the climate, against nature, and against man. But we must not take the exception for the general rule, and should rather seek the good of our country by stating what we believe to be true. We must confess that indolence does actually and positively exist there, only that, instead of holding it to be the cause of the backwardness and the troubles of the country, we regard it as the effect of the troubles and the backwardness, by the fostering of a lamentable predisposition.…[4]
The predisposition exists. Why should it not?
A hot climate requires of the individual quiet and rest, just as cold invites to labor and action. For this reason the Spaniard is more indolent than the Frenchman, the Frenchman more indolent than the German. The Europeans themselves that so liberally reproach the residents of the colonies (and I am not now speaking of the Spaniards but of the Germans [[185]]and English themselves), how do they live in tropical countries? Surrounded with a numerous train of servants, never going about but riding in a carriage, needing servants not only to take off their shoes for them but even to fan them! And yet they live and eat better, they work for themselves, they look for riches, they hope for a future, free and respected, while the poor colonist, the indolent colonist, is badly nourished, has no hope, toils for others, and works under force and compulsion!
Perhaps the reply to this will be that the white men are not made to stand the severity of the climate. A mistake! A man can live in any climate, if he will only adapt himself to its requirements and conditions.
What kills the Europeans in hot countries is the abuse of liquors, the attempt to live according to the nature of his own country under another sky and another sun. We inhabitants of hot countries live well in northern Europe whenever we take the precautions the people there take. Likewise Europeans can endure the torrid zone if they will but rid themselves of their prejudices.
The fact is that in tropical countries violent work is not a good thing as it is in cold countries. In tropical countries it is death, destruction, annihilation. Nature knows this and has therefore made the earth in tropical countries more fertile, more productive, as a compensation. An hour’s work under that burning sun, in the midst of the pernicious influence springing from nature in activity, is equal to a day’s work in a temperate climate. It is just, then, that the earth should yield a hundredfold![5]
Moreover, do we not see the active European, who has gained strength during the winter, who feels the fresh blood of spring boil in his veins, do we not see him abandon his labors during the few days of his variable summer, close his [[186]]office—where the work is not, after all, violent, where, in many cases, it amounts to talking and gesticulating in the shade or near a luncheon stand—do we not see him flee to watering-places where he sits idle in the cafés or idly strolls about? What wonder then that the inhabitant of tropical countries, worn out and with his blood thinned by the continuous and excessive heat, is reduced to inaction! Who is the indolent one in the Manila offices? Is it the poor clerk who comes in at 8 in the morning and leaves at 4 in the afternoon with only his umbrella, who copies and writes and works for himself and for his chief, or is it the chief, who comes in a carriage at 10 o’clock, leaves before 12, reads his newspaper while smoking and, with his feet cocked up on a chair or a table, gossips about all his friends?
Man is not a brute; he is not a machine. His object is not merely to produce; in spite of the pretensions of some Christian whites who would make of the colored Christian a kind of motive-power somewhat more intelligent and less costly than steam.[6]
Rizal found that in regard to indolence the Philippines were like a patient with a long continued disease. The doctor attributes the failure of his medicines to the debility of the patient’s system, and the patient ascribes his debilitated condition to the doctor’s remedies. He followed his illustration by remarking that, as in the case of a desperate illness, so in the government of the Philippines, the attendants seemed to lose their heads and, instead of seeking the causes of the disease to remove them, devoted themselves to attacking the symptoms, with here blood-letting (taxation), there a plaster (forced labor), and there a sedative (trifling reform). [[187]]
Every new arrival proposes a new remedy: one, seasons of prayer, the relics of a saint, the viaticum, the friars; another, a shower-bath; still another, with pretensions to modern ideas, a transfusion of the blood [that is to say, an agricultural colony of Europeans]. It’s nothing, only the patient has eight million indolent red corpuscles [Filipinos]; some few white corpuscles in the form of an agricultural colony will get us out of the trouble.…[7]
Yes, transfusion of blood, transfusion of blood! New life, new vitality! Yes, the new white corpuscles that you are going to inject into its veins, the new white corpuscles that were a cancer in another organism, will withstand all the depravity of the system, will withstand the blood-letting that it suffers every day, will have more stamina than all the eight million red corpuscles, will cure all the disorders, all the degeneration, all troubles in the principal organs.
Be thankful if they do not become coagulations and produce gangrene; be thankful if they do not reproduce the cancer!
He comes then to the central fact he has undertaken to establish. Here it is in the teeth of the plausible assertions of prejudice and the selfish interests that depreciate the natives: