We have noted what frenzy of consternation seized upon that element at the lightest whisper of revolt among the oppressed people. It was one of the invariable characteristics of the Spanish domination, an intermittent fever under the empire of which all reason or semblance of reason went to the winds and men outside the asylums acted like raving maniacs. Such manifestations of this strange psychology (only to be explained by recalling the Spaniard’s total misunderstanding of the Filipino nature) as followed the uprising of 1872 were still remembered by oppressor and oppressed. It was now revived for both as knowledge spread of this strange and powerful book. Besides the unendurable smart of its lash, the governing class saw in it consequences of the gravest import. It was standing and irrefutable evidence that the contempt for the native upon which Spanish rule proceeded was baseless; a native had created literature of the highest order. Still more alarming, it threatened to lead the way, to offer the example, to pioneer ceaseless ambuscades of the same kind, to show that the thing superstitiously held to be above all attack could be attacked safely and even with ridicule and this deadly laughter. If the author of “Noli Me Tangere” should escape without punishment, imitators might be expected on every side. Any native anywhere might take up similar weapons; hence, the white man’s supremacy in all the East was in jeopardy. It is not easy for the Occidental mind to grasp the power this suggestion has upon men charged with the holding in subjection of vast Asiatic populations; but it is to such men always the first consideration. It must be, in fact; because their situation is so abnormal that in times of cool reflection they must wonder at themselves. With bands of soldiers insignificant in numbers they are required to impose upon millions a sovereignty that the millions generally loathe. Diligently, then, they must support the fiction of the white man’s superiority, support it day and night without ceasing and be not too finical about means or manner. Doubtless, to many the task soon becomes congenial, so easily is race hatred bred in places out of the observation of Europe, and so strong is the addiction to it in some hearts not yet well removed from the stone age. Yet there have often appeared in these grimy scenes Europeans that instinctively hated the business and knew well enough that at bottom the real reason for dominating these subject peoples was dirty profits dirtily obtained. [95] But these very men, again and again, by the clamors about them and by the panic nature of the fears of what the aroused brown millions might do, have been swept despite themselves into acts at which their better natures revolted.