ul
experiences which have moulded and hardened the individual units of
other races, the Filipinos have, as a race, received an artificial
impetus which tends to deceive them as to their own capacity, and
to increase their aggregate self-confidence, while the results of
personal ineptitude are continually overlooked or excused.

Both civilization, as acquired in the three hundred years of Spanish
occupation, and self-government have descended upon the Filipino
very much as the telephone and the music box have done--as complete
mechanisms which certain superficial touches will set in motion,
the benefits of which are to certain classes and individuals quite
obvious, and the basic principles of which they have memorized but
have not _felt_. At present there are not, in the emotional being
of the Filipinos, the convictions about liberty and government
which are the heritage of a people whose ancestors have achieved
liberty and enlightenment by centuries of unaided effort, and
who are willing to die--die one and all--rather than lose them;
and yet there is a sincere, a passionate desire for political
independence. The Filipino leaders, however, have no intention of
dying for political independence, nor do they desire to sacrifice
even their personal pleasures or their effects. They talk a great
deal about independence, they write editorials about it, it fills
a great part of their thoughts; and no reasonable person can doubt
their sincerity. But most of the political talk in the Philippines is
on a par with certain socialistic thought in the United States--the
socialistic talk of modern writers and speakers, of idealists and
dreamers. It seems as great a perversion of abstract justice, to a
Filipino, that an alien nation should administer his Government, as
it seems to a hard-working American woman that she should toil all
her life, contributing her utmost to the world's progress and the
common burden of humanity, while her more fortunate sisters, by the
mere accident of birth, spend their lives in idleness and frivolity,
enriched by the toil of a really useful element in society. But
to most Filipinos, as to most American women, the contemplation of
the elemental injustice of life does not bring pangs sufficient to
drive them into overt action to right the injustice. There are a few
Filipinos upon whom the American administration in the Philippines
presses with a sense of personal obstruction and weight heavy enough
to ma