human
The country, he was saying to Don Filipo,
gpt
Do you think so?
human
Don't you see it? asked the old man, sitting up.
gpt
Ah! you did not know the past. Hear the students of to-day talking. New names are spoken under the arches that once heard only those of Saint Thomas, Suarez, Amat, and the other idols of my day. In vain the monks cry from the chair against the demoralization of the times; in vain the convents extend their ramifications to strangle the new ideas. The roots of a tree may influence the parasites growing on it, but they are powerless against the bird, which, from the branches, mounts triumphant toward the sky!
human
And yet the new germ is very feeble, said the lieutenant.
gpt
If they all set about it, the progress already so dearly paid for may yet be choked.
human
Choke it? Who? The weak dwarf, man, to choke progress, the powerful child of time and energy? When has he done that? He has tried dogma, the scaffold, and the stake, but E pur si muove is the device of progress. Wills are thwarted, individuals sacrificed. What does that mean to progress? She goes her way, and the blood of those who fall enriches the soil whence spring her new shoots. The Dominicans themselves do not escape this law, and they are beginning to imitate the Jesuits, their irreconcilable enemies.
gpt
Do you hold that the Jesuits move with progress? asked the astonished Don Filipo.
human
Then why are they so attacked in Europe?
gpt
I reply as did once an ecclesiastic of old, said the philosopher, laying his head back on the pillow and putting on his mocking air,
human
I can almost divine what you are thinking.
gpt
Can you?
human
You are thinking that I may easily be wrong; to-day I have the fever, and I am never infallible. But it is permitted us to dream. Why not make the dreams agreeable in the last hours of life? You are right: I do dream! Our young men think of nothing but loves and pleasures; our men of riper years have no activity but in vice, serve only to corrupt youth with their example; youth spends its best years without ideal, and childhood wakes to life in rust and darkness. It is well to die. Claudite jam rivos, pueri.
gpt
Is it time for your medicine?
human
The parting have no need of medicine, but those who stay. In a few days I shall be gone. The Philippines are in the shadows.