Chapter 4
Without connection whatsoever with the Bureau of Education of the Government of the Philippine Islands, I have spoken in the manner that I have just done, not to defend the lay schools of an unjust and unjustifiable accusation; not to attack any persons or any religious or political ideals, but to contribute to the eradication of one of the bases, one of the strongest causes of criminality, of corruption, of formation of individuals who are useless and detrimental to society: superstition. And, gentlemen, it is not a superstition that is only to be laughed at. Not by any means. It is a ridiculous and even absurd superstition, it is true, but it is a tragic and dangerous because it offers to the wicked, the criminal, the imbecile, the means of triumphing in life, of obtaining what they want, giving them the means of avoiding punishment, making fun here on earth of the justice of men, and securing from God the pardon from eternal condemnation thru the simple means of invoking the name of a saint, or thru the medium of a Latin word which, acting as a sort of open sesame opens wide to the devotee the gates of heaven.
The Lamentable Error of the Bishop of Cebu
The prelate who accused the public schools in the form above mentioned has committed a lamentable error. For my part, I can say that the accusations awakened in me a desire to investigate the causes of immorality and of the perversion of customs which the said prelate, and we with him, all regret. According to those who have studied the mentality of the majority of our people, it is evident that superstition is the enemy which we all have to combat and that is the cause of many of the moral errors which we observe. The regular friars as well as the secular clergy confess that the mass of the people still finds itself subject to the superstition inherited from our predecessors--the superstition which could be called genuinely Philippine, that which comes from the old belief in the nunu, in the asuang, the anito and all the spirits of the old idolatry preached before the implantation of Catholicism by the Spanish missionaries.
Failure of the Missionaries
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.
Disastrous Results
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.
The Public School
Permit me now to express first of all my gratitude to the Assistant Director, Mr. Osias, who had the kindness to honor me with an invitation to speak at this conference. Now, I wish to express to you my thanks for your kind attention. Lastly, I desire to make one declaration: Every time I referred to the new generation, I did not want to mention only the youth educated in the lay schools of the Government, but all the youth educated in modern ideas, all the men and women of whatever age who, throwing aside the weighty burden of the Legacy of Ignorantism (Le gado del Ignorantismo), have accepted modern ideas, have modified their mentality, have been modernized, thanks to the example of, and the contact with, the representatives of American democracy. All the change, all the economic, moral, social, and political transformation effected in the Filipino people, and which none denies nor anyone can deny, reveals progress, and that progress is not the result of the Legacy of Ignorantism but the natural consequence of the regime of liberty, industry, work and logical mentality which governs our public schools and orients our social life.
To the Department of Education, to all the teachers of both sexes--Americans and Filipinos--I express my profound gratitude for the splendid manner in which they are complying with the duty entrusted to them by America and by the Philippines.
NOTES
[1] Ignorantism, the spirit of those who extol the advantage of ignorance; obscurantism.
[2] Translated from Spanish.
[3] Of the one hundred fifty-six books which the censorship of the Manila Customs refused entrance because they are obscene, five were printed in French and one hundred fifty-one in Spanish. In English, it is known, no obscene literature is found.
[4] From the Bishop of Cebu, dated November 19, 1919.
[5] This book was printed in 1844. Today, in the year 1920, the seventh edition of the Rueda is sold in Manila and is used in some of the private schools. This edition is a reprint of the original edition without any correction so that in history Japan is not even mentioned, France is a kingdom, Prussian is separated from the rest of Germany; and in Spain, Isabela II is the one who still happily reigns. This is the famous book recommended by the priest who was interested in extending instruction in the Philippines.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Legacy of Ignorantism, by T.H. Pardo de Tavera