It is very significant that beneficence, charity, and morality are feminine virtues, it being woman's mission to exercise all these virtues in society. She must take a part, and should, in my opinion, always take the initiative, in all work for the protection of the orphans, the relief of distress, and the elevation of the standard of public morality. She must strive and suffer, in the society in which she is living, for all that is feminine in life, must with a wave of her hand attenuate the fierceness of the struggle for existence, and must brighten the gloomy night of human suffering with her gentle presence. Our country needs not only the strength of her men, but the kindness and charity of her women; she needs not only heroes, but also heroines. And heroines exist and always have existed in the history of humankind; and there are and always have been heroines in our country, the special privilege of which, according to serious foreign authors, consists in its women being superior to its men.
And the girls who to-day pay homage to Rizal and dedicate their songs and prayers to him, will to-morrow be citizenesses who will not, like unhappy Maria Clara, be made the victims of social injustice, but will help to banish social injustice and strive for justice, virtue, and the glory and greatness of their native land.
Yes; I cherish that hope and have faith in the liberty of woman. It is not possible to keep one-half of humanity in the upper part and the other half in the lower part of the balance without producing disequilibrium, tears, and suffering. Everything tends to reach the same level in life, the same as in death, the great leveller. Humanity has seen a new light which will shine brightly, though error and prejudice may endeavor to shroud it with darkness. Woe to those who refuse to see the light! The world continues to progress and stops for no one. He who wishes to lag behind is free to do so, but he will surely deplore it afterwards.
I can not prophesy what will be the outcome of the efforts which the Filipino women are now making to obtain suffrage; but I know that these efforts must be to them, and are to us, a source of pride and glory, because they show that there is no part of our people which has remained indifferent to the great movements of the century. There are persons who scoff at them and many shrug their shoulders; but this must not discourage our women, because neither scoffing nor shrugging the shoulders are very weighty arguments. The same persons who now laugh at them and shrug their shoulders, probably because they do not know that the world and society are moving and progressing, will some day recognize that these women were in the right, just as the men who scoffed at Rizal lived to deplore their mistake and have since made amends.
What we must do is to diffuse the light and spread the new doctrines, in order to convince those who unwittingly refuse to see justice and truth, the only firm foundations of the stability and prosperity of civilized society.