Why has it been thus? Because the Indians and the negroes do not possess that inclination toward civilization and that capacity for assimilation that are evident in the colored populations of the Philippine Islands. It is supposed that the Philippine Malays have Japanese blood in their veins; but, all the same, whether the supposition is founded or unfounded, it is certain that not only do they resemble the Japanese more or less in features, but that also many mental traits are common to them with these wide-awake Orientals, and they even excel them in a moral respect. The school statistics show them superior to their Spanish lords. The Filipinos have no larger percentage of illiterates than Spain of those who can not read and write. And, as a bishop exclaimed with astonishment, there are in those islands villages where it would be hard to find a person unable to read. The pressure of the colored people to the higher studies and the special schools far exceeds the percentage which one would anticipate from their proportion to the whole population. And if we add to these those who seek their education in Spain and other foreign countries we shall find Malays and mestizos in the first line, and the creoles in the last. It should be remarked on this point that many more natives would have gone to Europe for education if the Spaniards, and especially the monks, had not perceived conspirators in all Filipinos who studied away from home. The fear of persecution deterred many fathers from sending their sons over the sea. More than ten years ago a prominent monkish writer showed how the professions of medicine and the law were crowded with Malays and mestizos. But besides these two professions and that of the secular clergy the colored Filipinos turned also to engineering and art. With respect to art, I am not thinking of the skillful goldsmiths and silversmiths of Manila, although these artificers are among the best, but I refer to artists of divine gifts, among whom the mestizo F. Resureccion Hidalgo, resident in Paris, and Don Juan Luna, of the tribe of Ilokans of northwestern Luzon, brother of the Philippine minister Antonio Luna, are most conspicuous. Luna is not unknown to us Germans, for the Leipsic _Illustrirte Zeitung_ some time ago published a wood engraving of his great prize-crowned picture Spoliarum. The best testimony to his eminence is the fact that the Spanish Senate honored this artist, who was then living in Paris, with the commission to paint for its chamber a pendant to Padilla's famous picture Boabdil Surrendering the Keys of Granada to the Catholic Queen, and he painted The Battle of Lepanto. And among the Filipino poets the name of the great Tagal, Dr. Rizal, has become known to the whole world through his skill in tragedy.