The fact is that in tropical countries violent work is not a good thing as it is in cold countries. In tropical countries it is death, destruction, annihilation. Nature knows this and has therefore made the earth in tropical countries more fertile, more productive, as a compensation. An hour’s work under that burning sun, in the midst of the pernicious influence springing from nature in activity, is equal to a day’s work in a temperate climate. It is just, then, that the earth should yield a hundredfold! [126] Moreover, do we not see the active European, who has gained strength during the winter, who feels the fresh blood of spring boil in his veins, do we not see him abandon his labors during the few days of his variable summer, close his office—where the work is not, after all, violent, where, in many cases, it amounts to talking and gesticulating in the shade or near a luncheon stand—do we not see him flee to watering-places where he sits idle in the cafés or idly strolls about? What wonder then that the inhabitant of tropical countries, worn out and with his blood thinned by the continuous and excessive heat, is reduced to inaction! Who is the indolent one in the Manila offices? Is it the poor clerk who comes in at 8 in the morning and leaves at 4 in the afternoon with only his umbrella, who copies and writes and works for himself and for his chief, or is it the chief, who comes in a carriage at 10 o’clock, leaves before 12, reads his newspaper while smoking and, with his feet cocked up on a chair or a table, gossips about all his friends? Man is not a brute; he is not a machine. His object is not merely to produce; in spite of the pretensions of some Christian whites who would make of the colored Christian a kind of motive-power somewhat more intelligent and less costly than steam. [127] Rizal found that in regard to indolence the Philippines were like a patient with a long continued disease. The doctor attributes the failure of his medicines to the debility of the patient’s system, and the patient ascribes his debilitated condition to the doctor’s remedies. He followed his illustration by remarking that, as in the case of a desperate illness, so in the government of the Philippines, the attendants seemed to lose their heads and, instead of seeking the causes of the disease to remove them, devoted themselves to attacking the symptoms, with here blood-letting (taxation), there a plaster (forced labor), and there a sedative (trifling reform).