ed Don
Filipo. "You know that on the following morning the gobernadorcillo
liberated the soldiers that I had succeeded in arresting and refused
to take any further action. Without the consent of my superior officer
I could do nothing."

"You alone, nothing; but with the rest, much. You should have
taken advantage of this opportunity to set an example to the other
towns. Above the ridiculous authority of the gobernadorcillo are the
rights of the people. It was the beginning of a good lesson and you
have neglected it."

"But what could I have done against the representative of the
interests? Here you have Senor Ibarra, he has bowed before the beliefs
of the crowd. Do you think that he believes in excommunications?"

"You are not in the same fix. Senor Ibarra is trying to sow the good
seed, and to do so he must bend himself and make what use he can of
the material at hand. Your mission was to stir things up, and for that
purpose initiative and force are required. Besides, the fight should
not be considered as merely against the gobernadorcillo. The principle
ought to be, against him who makes wrong use of his authority,
against him who disturbs the public peace, against him who fails in
his duty. You would not have been alone, for the country is not the
same now that it was twenty years ago."

"Do you think so?" asked Don Filipo.

"Don't you feel it?" rejoined the old man, sitting up in his bed. "Ah,
that is because you haven't seen the past, you haven't studied the
effect of European immigration, of the coming of new books, and
of the movement of our youth to Europe. Examine and compare these
facts. It is true that the Royal and Pontifical University of Santo
Tomas, with its most sapient faculty, still exists and that some
intelligences are yet exercised in formulating distinctions and in
penetrating the subtleties of scholasticism; but where will you now
find the metaphysical youth of our days, with their archaic education,
who tortured their brains and died in full pursuit of sophistries
in some corner of the provinces, without ever having succeeded in
understanding the attributes of _being_, or solving the problem of
_essence_ and _existence_, those lofty concepts that made us forget
what was essential,--our own existence and our own individuality? Look
at the youth of today! Full of enthusiasm at the view of a wider
horizon, they study history, mathematics, geography, literature,
physical sciences, languages--a