The Social Cancer | Page 4

under the influences that make for
social and political progress. The dark chambers of the Inquisition
stifled all advance in thought, so the civilization and the culture of
Spain, as well as her political system, settled into rigid forms to await

only the inevitable process of stagnation and decay. In her proudest
hour an old soldier, who had lost one of his hands fighting her battles
against the Turk at Lepanto, employed the other in writing the
masterpiece of her literature, which is really a caricature of the nation.
There is much in the career of Spain that calls to mind the dazzling
beauty of her "dark-glancing daughters," with its early bloom, its
startling--almost morbid--brilliance, and its premature decay. Rapid
and brilliant was her rise, gradual and inglorious her steady decline,
from the bright morning when the banners of Castile and Aragon were
flung triumphantly from the battlements of the Alhambra, to the short
summer, not so long gone, when at Cavite and Santiago with swift,
decisive havoc the last ragged remnants of the once world-dominating
power were blown into space and time, to hover disembodied there, a
lesson and a warning to future generations. Whatever her final place in
the records of mankind, whether as the pioneer of modern civilization
or the buccaneer of the nations or, as would seem most likely, a goodly
mixture of both, she has at least--with the exception only of her great
mother, Rome--furnished the most instructive lessons in political
pathology yet recorded, and the advice to students of world progress to
familiarize themselves with her history is even more apt today than
when it first issued from the encyclopedic mind of Macaulay nearly a
century ago. Hardly had she reached the zenith of her power when the
disintegration began, and one by one her brilliant conquests dropped
away, to leave her alone in her faded splendor, with naught but her
vaunting pride left, another "Niobe of nations." In the countries more in
contact with the trend of civilization and more susceptible to
revolutionary influences from the mother country this separation came
from within, while in the remoter parts the archaic and outgrown
system dragged along until a stronger force from without destroyed it.
Nowhere was the crystallization of form and principle more
pronounced than in religious life, which fastened upon the mother
country a deadening weight that hampered all progress, and in the
colonies, notably in the Philippines, virtually converted her government
into a hagiarchy that had its face toward the past and either could not or
would not move with the current of the times. So, when "the shot heard
round the world," the declaration of humanity's right to be and to
become, in its all-encircling sweep, reached the lands controlled by her

it was coldly received and blindly rejected by the governing powers,
and there was left only the slower, subtler, but none the less sure,
process of working its way among the people to burst in time in
rebellion and the destruction of the conservative forces that would
repress it.
In the opening years of the nineteenth century the friar orders in the
Philippines had reached the apogee of their power and usefulness. Their
influence was everywhere felt and acknowledged, while the country
still prospered under the effects of the vigorous and progressive
administrations of Anda and Vargas in the preceding century. Native
levies had fought loyally under Spanish leadership against Dutch and
British invaders, or in suppressing local revolts among their own
people, which were always due to some specific grievance, never
directed definitely against the Spanish sovereignty. The Philippines
were shut off from contact with any country but Spain, and even this
communication was restricted and carefully guarded. There was an
elaborate central government which, however, hardly touched the life
of the native peoples, who were guided and governed by the parish
priests, each town being in a way an independent entity.
Of this halcyon period, just before the process of disintegration began,
there has fortunately been left a record which may be characterized as
the most notable Spanish literary production relating to the Philippines,
being the calm, sympathetic, judicial account of one who had spent his
manhood in the work there and who, full of years and experience, sat
down to tell the story of their life.[4] In it there are no puerile whinings,
no querulous curses that tropical Malays do not order their lives as did
the people of the Spanish village where he may have been reared, no
selfish laments of ingratitude over blessings unasked and only
imperfectly understood by the natives, no fatuous self-deception as to
the real conditions, but a patient consideration of the difficulties
encountered, the good accomplished, and the unavoidable evils incident
to any human work. The country and the people, too, are