Filipino people

“ To an American of analytical tendencies a few years in the Philippines present not only an interesting study of Filipino life, but a novel consciousness of our own. The affairs of these people are so simple where ours are complex, so complex where ours are simple, that one’s angle of view is considerably enlarged.
The general construction of society is mediæval and aristocratic. The aristocracy, with the exception of a few wealthy brewers and cigar manufacturers of Manila, is a land-holding one. There is practically no bourgeoisie—no commercial class—between the rich and the poor. ”

“ If it proves practical, it should be a great benefit to the Philippines. The Government should buy two or three and put them in operation to show the people how they can be used.”
The great majority of the Filipino people are simply apathetic toward the material and spiritual appliances of their present status. (Please do not infer, however, that they are apathetic toward the status itself.) Fortune is continually thrusting upon them a ready-made article, be it of transportation, of furniture, of education, or even of creed. ”

“ And to the quick criticism which Filipinos of the restless kind are prone to make, that what is good for an American is not necessarily good for a Filipino, the alien occupiers may reply that, until the body of the Filipino people shows more interest in developing itself, any prescription, whether it originate with Americans or with those who look upon themselves as the natural guides and rulers of this people, is an experiment to be tried at the ordinary experimental risk. ”

“ Who, but loves this people who has lived among them, not expecting perfection, nor a degree of disinterestedness which we do not as a Nation possess nor as individuals illustrate?
The Filipino has qualities which the longer you know him, commands your respect and sympathy and his imperfections are no more disagreeable than those of more highly developed peoples. ”

“ No, the divine flame of thought is inextinguishable in the Filipino people and somehow or other it will shine forth and compel recognition. It is impossible to brutalize the inhabitants of the Philippines! ”

“ It shows how well based upon reading and reason, no less than upon observation, was his faith in the Filipino people. Not from mere instinct nor from racial prejudice, he felt that here was a great and suppressed power. We dwell upon it also because it offers an unequaled picture of the Philippines after three hundred years of alien rule and indicates the appalling boundaries of the task that he had single-handed undertaken. Courage is the quality that mankind has elected most to honor. ”

“ The European Race and the Filipino People.—This expansion and progress of the European race early brought it into contact with the Filipino people, and the historical life of the Philippines dates from this meeting of the two races. Thus the history of the Philippines has become a part of the history of nations. During these centuries the people of these islands, subjects of a European nation, have progressed in social life and government, in education and industries, in numbers, and in wealth. ”

“ As education spread, as mankind elsewhere struggled more and more into comparative liberty, as the sense of injustice grew in the Filipino heart, the day would come when these people, too, would be driven to unite for the one great all-embracing, all-inspiring object of national freedom and national existence, and they would win it.
To this the friars and the governing class of the Philippines were now contributing by providing the immediate sting that seems always to be needed when an old and deep-lying resentment is to be goaded into outward and physical activities. ”

“ As the leader of the nation, I say in behalf of the Filipino people to the world: we are strong and principled believers in democracy. ”

“ The Story of the Philippines has many sad chapters, but there need be no more such. The Filipino people have been patient under trial. They have been forbearing through much injustice and misrule. They have been brave and patriotic always. Now we may hope that a new day has dawned upon the land. What this day will bring forth depends, to a great extent, upon the Filipino boys and girls who are now growing up. They must 243learn to be good citizens. They must be able, when they are men and women, to take a wise part in governing the country. ”

“ As such peoples constitute an eighth of the population of the Islands, I also object to the attempt of certain Filipino politicians to conceal the fact of their existence, and to the efforts of certain misguided Americans to minimize the importance of the problems which their existence presents. Let us look the facts in the face. The Moros are as “real” as the Tagálogs. [644]
The average Filipino does not object in the least to the exhibition of wild people. On the contrary, he is just as much interested in them as is the average American, and goes to see them whenever the opportunity offers. ”

“ A number of years have elapsed since the American people took up the white man’s burden in the Orient, and although thousands of Americans have visited our new possessions during this time, there are still many persons who think vaguely of the Philippines as a tiny group of islands somewhere in the Pacific, inhabited by half savage people who wear little or no clothing and prefer dog meat to all other kinds of food. ”

“ The bearers picked up the coffin, and the little procession went on its way to the cemetery. The ceremony lasted about one minute and a half, and consumed three out of my five pesos.
This incident illustrates neatly the friendless condition in which most Filipino poor live. Filipino lower-class people are gregarious, but not sociable. They are averse to solitary rural life and tend everywhere to live in villages, but they visit little with each other, and seem very indifferent to the cordial relations which bind our own laboring classes together. ”

“ In October of that year, 1889, appeared in Paris a rejoinder to sycophancy that set on edge the teeth of every Filipino in Europe. It was unsigned, but to the colonies the authorship seemed unmistakable. Only one Filipino could write like that; only one Filipino could wither with such disdainful sarcasm the apologist for the wrongers of his country.
The manifesto closes with this paragraph:
When a people is torn asunder, when its dignity, its honor, and all its liberties are trodden underfoot ”

“ The Filipino embraces civilization and lives and thrives in every clime, in contact with every people. ”

“ If ever a fair land has been cursed with the wearisome breed of fault-finders, both indigenous and exotic, that land is the Philippines, so it is indeed refreshing to turn from the dreary waste of carping criticisms, pragmatical “scientific” analyses, and sneering half-truths to a story pulsating with life, presenting the Filipino as a human being, with his virtues and his vices, his loves and hates, his hopes and fears. ”

“ Whatever their capacity for achieving the Anglo-Saxon ideal of self-government, it ought to be recognized that the Filipinos are both aided and handicapped by receiving not only their government but their civilization ready made. Their newly aroused sense of nationality is asserting itself at a period in the world’s development when the mechanical aids to industry and the conscience of a humane and civilized world relieve Filipino development from the birth throes by which other nations have struggled to the place at which the Filipinos begin. ”

“ To all the Far East he is slowly becoming a figure of inspiration and hope. To the modern Filipino world he gave an impetus and an impress it can hardly lose in generations if ever. To the movement for Philippine independence he gave vitality, character, and energy that have grown stronger year after year. Even when we consider the natural passion of the race for freedom and the long succession of revolts with which it shook Spanish rule, this remains substantially true. ”

“ It isn’t impossible for the Philippines to stand strong and say, "The Philippines is for Filipinos—and we are ready to defend it." It is not impossible for the Filipino who for so long had kept his head bowed upon meeting a foreigner—it is not impossible for the Filipino, today, to stand with his head held high and bask in the admiration of the world. ”

“ In regard to the Philippines, this must be remembered,—that we are dealing with human beings, not problems and principles. The stuff one generally reads about foreign places might be just as descriptive of the inhabitants of Mars. Little wonder that those for or against independence or protection fail to win their case! We must remember that for twenty years we have been building up the hopes of children whom we taught in our schools, with our money and our ideals. They are now, many of them, active men attending to the work of the Filipino world. ”

“ Nor can the American Government, if it remain here, do any more than it is now doing to urge the Filipino into real industrial and mental activity. Until the Filipino takes more interest in things than he takes in himself; until he learns to approach life from some other standpoint than the social one, and with some other object than seeing how large a figure he can cut in it, it makes no difference what flag flies over his head, his national existence is an artificial one, a semblance of living nourished by the selfishness of those with whom he has commercial relations. ”

“ Both civilization, as acquired in the three hundred years of Spanish occupation, and self-government have descended upon the Filipino very much as the telephone and the music box have done—as complete mechanisms which certain superficial touches will set in motion, the benefits of which are to certain classes and individuals quite obvious, and the basic principles of which they have memorized but have not felt. ”

“ Americans always appear to judge the Philippines by no standard, precedent, or parallel; which I suppose is very natural for anyone coming straight from such an absolutely different country as the U.S.A. In this article, of which I am speaking at present, there are many long and fine words recklessly thrown about, such as “introspection,” “collective individuality,” and so forth, which I think are meant to prove that if a Filipino child is precocious, he will grow up a clever, cultured, and enlightened man or woman ”

“ When they speak of independence, they invariably assume that America is going to protect them against China, Japan, or any of the great colony-holding nations of Europe.
Such are the peculiar governmental conceptions of the middle-class Filipino—a class holding the ballot by the grace of God and the assistance of the American Government. Their inverted ideas come from real inexperience in highly organized industrial society, and from perfectly natural deductions from books. ”

“ It is not easy to lay down any very definite rule about their appearance though, as the race is so hopelessly mixed with Spanish, Chinese, European—every nation under the sun, that it is difficult to say what is a Filipino face. ”

“ A poor Filipino’s conception of work is of something that takes him into the sun or that soils his clothing. Filipinos hate and fear the sun just as they hate the visible tokens of toil on their persons. ”

“ Their fury seems to have been particularly directed against the petty tyrants of their own race, the caciques or principales.
The result of Spanish civilization in the Philippines had been to educate, and, to a certain degree, enrich a small class of Filipinos, usually known as principales or the gente ilustrada. It is this class which has absorbed the direction of municipal and local affairs, and which almost [256] alone of the Filipino population has shared in those benefits and opportunities which civilized life should bring. ”

“ The truth is, the Filipinos, in the mass, are, as regards the purposes of any real education, virgin material to work upon. Not only has their national and social life not been cast over in Latin molds, but Spanish influence was just sufficient, added to their undeveloped state at the time of the conquest, so that there are no ‘Filipino molds’ of civilization. ”

“ As a safeguard to its own racial welfare, it may become necessary to give the Filipino his independence, commend him to the benevolence of Providence and the League of Nations, and have nothing more to do with him. ”

“ In Manila and all the large coast towns trade is largely in the hands of foreigners, chiefly Chinese, some few of whom have become converted to the Catholic faith, and established themselves permanently [233] in the country;—all of whom have found Filipino helpmates, either with or without the sanction of the Church, and have added their contingent of half-breeds, or mestizos, to the population.
The land-owning aristocracy, though it must have been in possession of its advantages for several generations, seems deficient in jealous exclusiveness on the score of birth. ”

“ The Filipinos are in many ways children, delightful ones, with charming manners, but needing a firm and even rule till they come of age and take over their own affairs. Most Filipinos of intelligence realize this. In fact, they have of late been rushing in petitions signed by their best and most influential citizens urging the retention of the Islands in their present standing.
What the Filipino wishes for himself depends upon the man. Only one in ten, among the civilized tribes, knows anything about the discussion of independence. ”

“ The feeling between these poor Filipinos and their so-called employers is just what the feeling used to be between Southerners and their negroes. The lower-class man is proud of his connection with the great family. He guards its secrets and is loyal to it. He will fight for it, if ordered, and desist when ordered.
The second house I lived in in Capiz was smaller than the first, and had on the lower floor a Filipino family in one room. ”