"I will answer you like an old scholastic.... One may accompany the course of Progress in three ways, ahead of her, side by side with her, and behind her. The first are those who guide the course of Progress; the second are those who are borne along by her; the last are dragged along, and among them are the Jesuits. Well would they like to direct her course, but, as they see her in the possession of full strength and having other tendencies, they capitulate, preferring to follow rather than be smothered or be left in the middle of the road without light. Well now, we in the Philippines are traveling along at least three centuries behind the car of Progress; we are barely commencing to emerge from the Middle Ages. Hence, the Jesuits, reactionary in Europe, when seen from our point of view represent Progress; the Philippines owe to them their dawning system of instruction, and to them the Natural Sciences, the soul of the nineteenth century, as it has been indebted to the Dominicans for Scholasticism, already dead in spite of Leo XIII--no Pope can revive what common sense has judged and condemned.... The strife is on between the past, which cleaves and clings with curses to the waning feudal castle, and the future, whose song of triumph may be faintly heard off in the distant but splendorous glories of a dawn that is coming, bringing the message of Good-News from other countries." "The walls were entirely bare; not a drawing, nor an engraving, nor even any kind of a representation of an instrument of physics. On occasions there would be lowered from heaven an instrumentlet to be shown from afar to the class, like the Holy of Holies to the prostrate faithful: 'Look at me, but don't touch me.' From time to time, some complacent professor came, a day of the year was assigned for visiting the mysterious 'cabinet,' and admiring from afar the enigmatic apparatus arranged inside the cases. Then no one could complain; that day there were seen much brass, much glass, many tubes, disks, wheels, bells, etc. And the show stopped there, and the Philippines were not turned upside down. For the rest, the students are convinced that these instruments were not bought for them; merry fools would the friars be! The 'cabinet' was made to be shown to foreigners and to high officials from Spain, that, on seeing it, they may nod in approbation, while their guide smiles as if saying: 'You have been thinking you were going to find a lot of backward monks, eh? Well, we are at the height of the century; we have a cabinet!'