what then--what have you gained? At best, a country of pronunciamentos,
a land of civil wars, a republic of the greedy and the malcontents,
like some of the republics of South America! To what are you tending
now, with your instruction in Castilian, a pretension that would be
ridiculous were it not for its deplorable consequences! You wish to
add one more language to the forty odd that are spoken in the islands,
so that you may understand one another less and less."

"On the contrary," replied Basilio, "if the knowledge of Castilian
may bind us to the government, in exchange it may also unite the
islands among themselves."

"A gross error!" rejoined Simoun. "You are letting yourselves be
deceived by big words and never go to the bottom of things to examine
the results in their final analysis. Spanish will never be the general
language of the country, the people will never talk it, because the
conceptions of their brains and the feelings of their hearts cannot
be expressed in that language--each people has its own tongue, as it
has its own way of thinking! What are you going to do with Castilian,
the few of you who will speak it? Kill off your own originality,
subordinate your thoughts to other brains, and instead of freeing
yourselves, make yourselves slaves indeed! Nine-tenths of those of
you who pretend to be enlightened are renegades to your country! He
among you who talks that language neglects his own in such a way that
he neither writes nor understands it, and how many have I not seen
who pretended not to know a single word of it! But fortunately, you
have an imbecile government! While Russia enslaves Poland by forcing
the Russian language upon it, while Germany prohibits French in the
conquered provinces, your government strives to preserve yours, and
you in return, a remarkable people under an incredible government, you