More mysterious than the most profound mystery of Religion,
his most striking trait of character being a decided tendency to
retrogression, the Malay stands out among the numerous divisions of
the human family as a man with a marked propensity to the mysterious,
to the prodigious. He is accustomed to give a blind obedience to
his superiors and more so to his own caciques, he is docile as a
general rule, and shows but little resentment to abusive language,
although he will sometimes carefully guard the remembrance of some
insignificant insult or blow, and take a cruel revenge, a thousand
times greater than the injury he received, after a period, at times,
of years. Other peculiarities of the native are his delight in gambling
and cockfighting, his aversion to manual labor, his infantile but
excessive vanity, his lack of the power of thought in matters of
moment, his well developed imagination, his instability from all points
of view and his liability to complete and radical changes. The average
indian is to-day virtuous, honest and grateful for favors received,
tomorrow he is vicious, thieving and shows an ingratitude not to be
found even in the brute creation. This very marked trait of character
may be found in many of the Filipinos who have held and still hold
some of the highest official positions in the islands.
To sum up the Filipino indian in a few words: he is inexplicable. There
have been those who have spent their lives in the study of the indian,
but in spite of all that man can do to study man, the problem remains
unsolved. Only those "globe trotters" who have studied the native
from the muchacho who waited upon them at the hotel at which they
stayed during their few days visit, and the cochero who had the honor
of conducting such savants to and from the Luneta, have so far been
able to demonstrate what is this character which has puzzled men of
common sense and lifelong experience, for centuries.
Being by nature credulous, ignorant and superstitious, the indian fell
an easy victim to the mysteries of freemasonry, which served him as
are introduction to the semi-savage methods of the "Liga Filipina"
and the barbarous practices of the Katipunan, the pacto-de-sangre of
which, carried him back to the savage times of his remote ancestors
who were drawn from their mountain and forest lairs and domesticated
by the Religious Orders.
Notes 20, 21, 22. The initiations, proofs, oaths etc., of Universal
freemasonry were utilized by the Filipino lodges to serve as a
ceremonial, a very essential thing to the success of any association
among orientals. Nothing suited the taste of the Filipino better than
the awe inspiring solemnity of his initiation. These ceremonies however
fell into abuse, and by the time they became utilized by the Katipunan
they had reached the verge of the grossest superstition and absurdity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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