All the natural laws of development are turned around in the Philippines, and motives which should belong to the crowning years of a nation’s life seem to have become mixed in at the beginning—­a condition, due, of course, to the fact that the Filipinos began the march of progress at a time when the telegraph and the cable and books and newspapers and globe-trotters submitted their early development to a harrowing comparison and observation.  The Filipino is like an orphan baby, not allowed to have his cramps and colic and to cut his teeth in the decent retirement of the parental nursery, but dragged out instead into distressing publicity, told that his wails are louder, his digestive habits more uncertain, his milk teeth more unsatisfactory, than the wails or the digestive habits or the milk teeth of any other baby that ever went through the developing process.  Naturally he is self-conscious, and—­let us be truthful—­not having been a very promising baby from the beginning, both he and his nurses have had a hard time.

However, turned around or not, we are not responsible for the condition.  The Filipinos had arrived at the self-conscious stage before we came here, and we have had to accept the situation and make the best of it.

The American press of Manila, with the very best of intentions, has indulged itself in much editorial comment, and the more the condition of things is discussed, the more the native press strengthens in its quick sensitiveness.  The present attitude of the upper, or governing, class of Filipinos is this:  “We want the best of everything in the world—­of education, of morals, of business methods, of social polish, of literature, art, and music, of roads and bridges, of agricultural machinery, and of local transportation, and we can attain these things.”  They have laid down in the beginning a premise for which no inductive process can be found as justification,—­that the Filipino people is capable of doing anything which any other nation has done; and that, given time and opportunity—­especially the opportunity of managing their own process of development—­they will demonstrate their capacity.  The flat contradiction of this position which is not infrequently taken by Americans in discussing Filipinos is, of course, as extreme as the Filipino position itself, and, as an observer, I have little to do with either.  But at the present time I do feel warranted in stating that the mass of intelligent Filipinos fail to distinguish between critical or appreciative ability and real creative ability, and that what they are acquiring in huge doses just now is the critical and not the creative.  Moreover, of the great body of persons who make the demand for the best, only a very few have any idea of what is the best except in book learning and social polish.  The prominent men among the Filipinos to-day are those who were educated in Europe or in Filipino schools modelled on European patterns.  Their idea of education is a social one—­an