The Indolence of the Filipino

I

DOCTOR Sancianco, in his Progreso de Filipinas, (1), has taken up
this question, agitated, as he calls it, and, relying upon facts and
reports furnished by the very same Spanish authorities that rule the
Philippines, has demonstrated that such indolence does not exist, and
that all said about it does not deserve reply or even passing notice.

Nevertheless, as discussion of it has been continued, not only
by government employees who make it responsible for their own
shortcomings, not only by the friars who regard it as necessary in
order that they may continue to represent, themselves as indispensable,
but also by serious and disinterested persons; and as evidence
of greater or less weight may be adduced in opposition to that
which Dr. Sancianco cites, it seems expedient, to us to study this
question thoroughly, without superciliousness or sensitiveness,
without prejudice, without pessimism. And as we can only serve our
country by telling the truth, however bit, tee it be, just as a
flat and skilful negation cannot refute a real and positive fact,
in spite of the brilliance of the arguments; as a mere affirmation is
not sufficient to create something impossible, let us calmly examine
the facts, using on our part all the impartiality of which a man
is capable who is convinced that there is no redemption except upon
solid bases of virtue.

The word indolence has been greatly misused in the sense of little
love for work and lack of energy, while ridicule has concealed the
misuse. This much-discussed question has met with the same fate as
certain panaceas and specifies of the quacks who by ascribing to them
impossible virtues have discredited them. In the Middle Ages, and even
in some Catholic countries now, the devil is blamed for everything that
superstitious folk cannot understand or the perversity of mankind is
loath to confess. In the Philippines one’s own and another’s faults,
the shortcomings of one, the misdeeds of another, are attributed to
indolence. And just as in the Middle Ages he who sought the explanation
of phenomena outside of infernal influences was persecuted, so in the
Philippines worse happens to him who seeks the origin of the trouble
outside of accepted beliefs.

The consequence of this misuse is that there are some who are
interested in stating it as a dogma and others in combating it as a
ridiculous superstition, if not a punishable delusion. Yet it is not
to be inferred from the misuse of a thing that it does not exist.

We think that there must be something behind all this outcry, for it
is incredible that so many should err, among whom we have said there
are a lot of serious and disinterested persons. Some act in bad faith,
through levity, through want of sound judgment, through limitation
in reasoning power, ignorance of the past, or other cause. Some repeat
what they have heard, without, examination or reflection; others speak
through pessimism or are impelled by that human characteristic which
paints as perfect everything that belongs to oneself and defective
whatever belongs to another. But it cannot be denied that there are
some who worship truth, or if not truth itself at least the semblance
thereof, which is truth in the mind of the crowd.

Examining well, then, all the scenes and all the men that we have
known from Childhood, and the life of our country, we believe that
indolence does exist there. The Filipinos, who can measure up with the
most active peoples in the world, will doubtless not repudiate this
admission, for it is true that there one works and struggles against
the climate, against nature and against men. But we must not take the
exception for the general rule, and should rather seek the good of our
country by stating what we believe to be true. We must confess that
indolence does actually and positively exist there; only that, instead
of holding it to be the cause of the backwardness and the trouble,
we regard it as the effect of the trouble and the backwardness,
by fostering the development of a lamentable predisposition.

Those who have as yet treated of indolence, with the exception of
Dr. Sancianco, have been content to deny or affirm it. We know of no
one who has studied its causes. Nevertheless, those who admit its
existence and exaggerate it more or less have not therefore failed
to advise remedies taken from here and there, from Java, from India,
from other English or Dutch colonies, like the quack who saw a fever
cured with a dozen sardines and afterwards always prescribed these
fish at every rise in temperature that he discovered in his patients.

We shall proceed otherwise. Before proposing a remedy we shall examine
the causes, and even though strictly speaking a predisposition is not
a cause, let us, however, study at its true value this predisposition
due to nature.

The predisposition exists? Why shouldn’t it?