478 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



development of the native races will depend on their religion. In 

 a colony where Islam or a dogmatized heathen religion prevails no 

 assimilation between Europeans and natives can take place. It is 

 otherwise in countries like the Philippines, where the natives ac- 

 cepted Christianity at a time when religion had more importance 

 among Europeans than now; a common basis was formed for the co- 

 operation of both parts, the whites and the colored. But the cir- 

 cumstance that rulers and ruled had the same religion and the same 

 official language may have led directly to another evil that the 

 colors became marks of condition, the whites being the Spartans, the 

 mestizos the perioikoi, and the colored men the helots or servile 

 people. So long as no pressure toward higher ambitions occurred 

 from among those of the perioikoi and the helot grades, and so 

 long as the whites were able to keep their prestige freely recognized 

 by their dependents, the view of the whites, that the colored were 

 both socially and intellectually a lower caste, seemed to be justi- 

 fied. The case has been different in the present century, especially 

 in the second half of it. People of our (Philippine) race attended 

 the high schools, appropriated to themselves the civilization and the 

 knowledge of the whites, and still the brand of inferiority stuck to 

 them. And this happened, too, when the quality of the whites 

 had deteriorated. They were no longer exclusively senors, but 

 there came bankrupted Spaniards or those of the lowest classes into 

 the country, among them persons who could not read and write, 

 who should be rated as beneath our school-trained people. And 

 yet these illiterates claimed, by virtue of their color, to be respected 

 as lords of the land, an absurdity which left the idea of ' European 

 prestige ' without justification, for how could beggars, spongers, 

 bummers, rowdies, and illiterates impress anybody? The decent 

 Spaniards committed the mistake of avowing their solidarity with 

 the sorry fellows of their caste, instead of rejecting them and hold- 

 ing aloof from them and sending them back to Spain. So the Span- 

 iards have brought it to pass, through a mistaken policy, that the 

 Filipinos on their side, too, throw the good elements of the Spanish 

 population into the same pot with the foul. Another reason why a 

 Spanish prestige can not be thought of among us is that, with the 

 exception of the tobacco companies, all the great enterprises in our 

 country are carried on by foreigners and Filipinos. We owe all 

 that is called progress not to the Spaniards, but to our own force 

 or to foreigners." 



When the painter Juan Luna attracted so much attention with 

 his picture Spoliarum it was not known that the artist was a Malay, 

 and the work was therefore regarded and criticised from a purely 

 artistic point of view. But as soon as the race of the painter became 



