his intelligence not respected.

The reasons that originate in the lack of national sentiment are
still more lamentable and more transcendental.

Convinced by the insinuation of his inferiority, his spirit harassed
by his education, if that brutalization of which we spoke above can
be called education, in that exchange of usages and sentiments among
different nations, the Filipino, to whom remain only his susceptibility
and his poetical imagination, allows himself to be guided by his fancy
and his self-love. It is sufficient that the foreigner praise to him
the imported merchandise and run down the native product for him to
hasten to make the change, without reflecting that everything has its
weak side and the most sensible custom is ridiculous in the eyes
of those who do not follow it. They have dazzled him with tinsel,
with strings, of colored glass beads, with noisy rattles, shining
mirrors and other trinkets, and he has given in return his gold,
his conscience, and even his liberty. He changed his religion for the
external practices of another cult; the convictions and usages derived
from his climate and needs, for other usages and other convictions
that developed under another sky and another inspiration. His spirit,
well-disposed toward everything that looks good to him, was then
transformed, at the pleasure of the nation that forced upon him
its God and its laws, and as the trader with whom he dealt did not
bring a cargo of useful implements of iron, hoes to till the fields,
but stamped papers, crucifixes, bulls and prayer-books; as he did
not have for ideal and prototype the tanned and vigorous laborer,
but the aristocratic lord, carried in a luxurious litter, the result
was that the imitative people became bookish, devout, prayerful; it
acquired ideas of luxury and ostentation, without thereby improving