“Choke it? Who? The weak dwarf, man, to choke progress, the powerful child of time and energy? When has he done that? He has tried dogma, the scaffold, and the stake, but E pur si muove is the device of progress. Wills are thwarted, individuals sacrificed. What does that mean to progress? She goes her way, and the blood of those who fall enriches the soil whence spring her new shoots. The Dominicans themselves do not escape this law, and they are beginning to imitate the Jesuits, their irreconcilable enemies.”
“Do you hold that the Jesuits move with progress?” asked the astonished Don Filipo. “Then why are they so attacked in Europe?”
“I reply as did once an ecclesiastic of old,” said the philosopher, laying his head back on the pillow and putting on his mocking air, “that there are three ways of moving with progress: ahead, beside, behind; the first guide, the second follow, the third are dragged. The Jesuits are of these last. At present, in the Philippines, we are about three centuries behind the van of the general movement. The Jesuits, who in Europe are the reaction, viewed from here represent progress. For instance, the Philippines owe to them the introduction of the natural sciences, the soul of the nineteenth century. As for ourselves, at this moment we are entering a period of strife: strife between the past which grapples to itself the tumbling feudal castle, and the future whose song may be heard afar off, bringing us from distant lands the tidings of good news.”
The old man stopped, but seeing the expression of Don Filipo he smiled and went on.
“I can almost divine what you are thinking.”
“Can you?”
“You are thinking that I may easily be wrong; to-day I have the fever, and I am never infallible. But it is permitted us to dream. Why not make the dreams agreeable in the last hours of life? You are right: I do dream! Our young men think of nothing but loves and pleasures; our men of riper years have no activity but in vice, serve only to corrupt youth with their example; youth spends its best years without ideal, and childhood wakes to life in rust and darkness. It is well to die. Claudite jam rivos, pueri.”
“Is it time for your medicine?” asked Don Filipo, seeing the cloud on the old man’s face.
“The parting have no need of medicine, but those who stay. In a few days I shall be gone. The Philippines are in the shadows.”