more gallant than Hernan Cortez and Salcedo, nor more prudent than
Legazpi, nor more manly than Morga, nor more studious than Colin and
Gaspar de San Agustin, our contemporary writers, we say, find that the
native is a creature something more than a monkey but much less than
a man, an anthropoid, dull-witted, stupid, timid, dirty, cringing,
grinning, ill-clothed, indolent, lazy, brainless, immoral, etc., etc.

To what is this retrogression due? Is it the delectable civilization,
the religion of salvation of the friars, called of Jesus Christ by
a euphemism, that has produced this miracle, that has atrophied his
brain, paralyzed his heart and made of the man this sort of vicious
animal that the writers depict?

Alas! The whole misfortune of the present Filipinos consists in that
they have become only half-way brutes. The Filipino is convinced that
to get happiness it is necessary for him to lay aside his dignity
as a rational creature, to attend mass, to believe what is told him,
to pay what is demanded of him, to pay and forever to pay; to work,
suffer and be silent, without aspiring to anything, without aspiring to
know or even to understand Spanish, without separating himself from his
carabao, as the priests shamelessly say, without protesting against
any injustice, against any arbitrary action, against an assault,
against an insult; that is, not to have heart, brain or spirit:
a creature with arms and a purse full of gold ............ there's
the ideal native! Unfortunately, or because the brutalization is not
yet complete and because the nature of man is inherent in his being in
spite of his condition, the native protests; he still has aspirations,
he thinks and strives to rise, and there's the trouble!