,
for all that is feminine in life, must with a wave of her
hand attenuate the fierceness of the struggle for existence,
and must brighten the gloomy night of human suffering with
her gentle presence. Our country needs not only the strength
of her men, but the kindness and charity of her women;
she needs not only heroes, but also heroines. And heroines
exist and always have existed in the history of humankind;
and there are and always have been heroines in our country,
the special privilege of which, according to serious foreign
authors, consists in its women being superior to its men.

And the girls who to-day pay homage to Rizal and dedicate their
songs and prayers to him, will to-morrow be citizenesses who
will not, like unhappy Maria Clara, be made the victims of
social injustice, but will help to banish social injustice
and strive for justice, virtue, and the glory and greatness
of their native land.

Yes; I cherish that hope and have faith in the liberty of woman. It
is not possible to keep one-half of humanity in the upper part and
the other half in the lower part of the balance without producing
disequilibrium, tears, and suffering. Everything tends to reach the
same level in life, the same as in death, the great leveller. Humanity
has seen a new light which will shine brightly, though error and
prejudice may endeavor to shroud it with darkness. Woe to those who
refuse to see the light! The world continues to progress and stops
for no one. He who wishes to lag behind is free to do so, but he will
surely deplore it afterwards.

I can not prophesy what will be the outcome of the efforts which the
Filipino women are now making to obtain suffrage; but I know that
these efforts must be to them, and are to us, a source of pride and
glory, because they show that there is no part of our people which
has remained indifferent to the great movements of the century. There
are persons who scoff at them and many shrug their shoulders; but
this must not discourage our women, because neither scoffing nor
shrugging the shoulders are very weighty arguments. The same persons
who now laugh at them and shrug their shoulders, probably because they
do not know that the world and society are moving and progressing,
will some day recognize that these women were in the right, just as
the men who scoffed at Rizal lived to deplore their mistake and have
since made amend