Part 7 (1/2)
Basilio was silent before such bitter reproaches and listened with bowed head, while Simoun resumed: ”I saw this movement started and have pa.s.sed whole nights of anguish, because I understood that among those youths there were exceptional minds and hearts, sacrificing themselves for what they thought to be a good cause, when in reality they were working against their own country. How many times have I wished to speak to you young men, to reveal myself and undeceive you! But in view of the reputation I enjoy, my words would have been wrongly interpreted and would perhaps have had a counter effect. How many times have I not longed to approach your Makaraig, your Isagani! Sometimes I thought of their death, I wished to destroy them--”
Simoun checked himself.
”Here's why I let you live, Basilio, and by such imprudence I expose myself to the risk of being some day betrayed by you. But you know who I am, you know how much I must have suffered--then believe in me! You are not of the common crowd, which sees in the jeweler Simoun the trader who incites the authorities to commit abuses in order that the abused may buy jewels. I am the Judge who wishes to castigate this system by making use of its own defects, to make war on it by flattering it. I need your help, your influence among the youth, to combat these senseless desires for Hispanization, for a.s.similation, for equal rights. By that road you will become only a poor copy, and the people should look higher. It is madness to attempt to influence the thoughts of the rulers--they have their plan outlined, the bandage covers their eyes, and besides losing time uselessly, you are deceiving the people with vain hopes and are helping to bend their necks before the tyrant. What you should do is to take advantage of their prejudices to serve your needs. Are they unwilling that you be a.s.similated with the Spanish people? Good enough! Distinguish yourselves then by revealing yourselves in your own character, try to lay the foundations of the Philippine fatherland! Do they deny you hope? Good! Don't depend on them, depend upon yourselves and work! Do they deny you representation in their Cortes? So much the better! Even should you succeed in sending representatives of your own choice, what are you going to accomplish there except to be overwhelmed among so many voices, and sanction with your presence the abuses and wrongs that are afterwards perpetrated? The fewer rights they allow you, the more reason you will have later to throw off the yoke, and return evil for evil. If they are unwilling to teach you their language, cultivate your own, extend it, preserve to the people their own way of thinking, and instead of aspiring to be a province, aspire to be a nation! Instead of subordinate thoughts, think independently, to the end that neither by right, nor custom, nor language, the Spaniard can be considered the master here, nor even be looked upon as a part of the country, but ever as an invader, a foreigner, and sooner or later you will have your liberty! Here's why I let you live!”
Basilio breathed freely, as though a great weight had been lifted from him, and after a brief pause, replied: ”Sir, the honor you do me in confiding your plans to me is too great for me not to be frank with you, and tell you that what you ask of me is beyond my power. I am no politician, and if I have signed the pet.i.tion for instruction in Castilian it has been because I saw in it an advantage to our studies and nothing more. My destiny is different; my aspiration reduces itself to alleviating the physical sufferings of my fellow men.”
The jeweler smiled. ”What are physical sufferings compared to moral tortures? What is the death of a man in the presence of the death of a society? Some day you will perhaps be a great physician, if they let you go your way in peace, but greater yet will be he who can inject a new idea into this anemic people! You, what are you doing for the land that gave you existence, that supports your life, that affords you knowledge? Don't you realize that that is a useless life which is not consecrated to a great idea? It is a stone wasted in the fields without becoming a part of any edifice.”
”No, no, sir!” replied Basilio modestly, ”I'm not folding my arms, I'm working like all the rest to raise up from the ruins of the past a people whose units will be bound together--that each one may feel in himself the conscience and the life of the whole. But however enthusiastic our generation may be, we understand that in this great social fabric there must be a division of labor. I have chosen my task and will devote myself to science.”
”Science is not the end of man,” declared Simoun.
”The most civilized nations are tending toward it.”
”Yes, but only as a means of seeking their welfare.”
”Science is more eternal, it's more human, it's more universal!” exclaimed the youth in a transport of enthusiasm. ”Within a few centuries, when humanity has become redeemed and enlightened, when there are no races, when all peoples are free, when there are neither tyrants nor slaves, colonies nor mother countries, when justice rules and man is a citizen of the world, the pursuit of science alone will remain, the word patriotism will be equivalent to fanaticism, and he who prides himself on patriotic ideas will doubtless be isolated as a dangerous disease, as a menace to the social order.”
Simoun smiled sadly. ”Yes, yes,” he said with a shake of his head, ”yet to reach that condition it is necessary that there be no tyrannical and no enslaved peoples, it is necessary that man go about freely, that he know how to respect the rights of others in their own individuality, and for this there is yet much blood to be shed, the struggle forces itself forward. To overcome the ancient fanaticism that bound consciences it was necessary that many should perish in the holocausts, so that the social conscience in horror declared the individual conscience free. It is also necessary that all answer the question which with each day the fatherland asks them, with its fettered hands extended! Patriotism can only be a crime in a tyrannical people, because then it is rapine under a beautiful name, but however perfect humanity may become, patriotism will always be a virtue among oppressed peoples, because it will at all times mean love of justice, of liberty, of personal dignity--nothing of chimerical dreams, of effeminate idyls! The greatness of a man is not in living before his time, a thing almost impossible, but in understanding its desires, in responding to its needs, and in guiding it on its forward way. The geniuses that are commonly believed to have existed before their time, only appear so because those who judge them see from a great distance, or take as representative of the age the line of stragglers!”
Simoun fell silent. Seeing that he could awake no enthusiasm in that unresponsive mind, he turned to another subject and asked with a change of tone: ”And what are you doing for the memory of your mother and your brother? Is it enough that you come here every year, to weep like a woman over a grave?” And he smiled sarcastically.
The shot hit the mark. Basilio changed color and advanced a step.
”What do you want me to do?” he asked angrily.
”Without means, without social position, how may I bring their murderers to justice? I would merely be another victim, shattered like a piece of gla.s.s hurled against a rock. Ah, you do ill to recall this to me, since it is wantonly reopening a wound!”
”But what if I should offer you my aid?”
Basilio shook his head and remained pensive. ”All the tardy vindications of justice, all the revenge in the world, will not restore a single hair of my mother's head, or recall a smile to my brother's lips. Let them rest in peace--what should I gain now by avenging them?”
”Prevent others from suffering what you have suffered, that in the future there be no brothers murdered or mothers driven to madness. Resignation is not always a virtue; it is a crime when it encourages tyrants: there are no despots where there are no slaves! Man is in his own nature so wicked that he always abuses complaisance. I thought as you do, and you know what my fate was. Those who caused your misfortunes are watching you day and night, they suspect that you are only biding your time, they take your eagerness to learn, your love of study, your very complaisance, for burning desires for revenge. The day they can get rid of you they will do with you as they did with me, and they will not let you grow to manhood, because they fear and hate you!”
”Hate me? Still hate me after the wrong they have done me?” asked the youth in surprise.
Simoun burst into a laugh. ”'It is natural for man to hate those whom he has wronged,' said Tacitus, confirming the _quos laeserunt et oderunt_ of Seneca. When you wish to gauge the evil or the good that one people has done to another, you have only to observe whether it hates or loves. Thus is explained the reason why many who have enriched themselves here in the high offices they have filled, on their return to the Peninsula relieve themselves by slanders and insults against those who have been their victims. _Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quern laeseris!”_
”But if the world is large, if one leaves them to the peaceful enjoyment of power, if I ask only to be allowed to work, to live--”
”And to rear meek-natured sons to send them afterwards to submit to the yoke,” continued Simoun, cruelly mimicking Basilio's tone. ”A fine future you prepare for them, and they have to thank you for a life of humiliation and suffering! Good enough, young man! When a body is inert, it is useless to galvanize it. Twenty years of continuous slavery, of systematic humiliation, of constant prostration, finally create in the mind a twist that cannot be straightened by the labor of a day. Good and evil instincts are inherited and transmitted from father to son. Then let your idylic ideas live, your dreams of a slave who asks only for a bandage to wrap the chain so that it may rattle less and not ulcerate his skin! You hope for a little home and some ease, a wife and a handful of rice--here is your ideal man of the Philippines! Well, if they give it to you, consider yourself fortunate.”
Basilio, accustomed to obey and bear with the caprices and humors of Capitan Tiago. was now dominated by Simoun, who appeared to him terrible and sinister on a background bathed in tears and blood. He tried to explain himself by saying that he did not consider himself fit to mix in politics, that he had no political opinions because he had never studied the question, but that he was always ready to lend his services the day they might be needed, that for the moment he saw only one need, the enlightenment of the people.