Page:Brazilian short stories.djvu/12

8BRAZILIAN SHORT STORIES processes. Who copies, does not imitate; he steals. Who plagiarizes does not imitate; he apes." And let us recall that Lobato presents this book as "a war-cry in favor of personality”). To continue with the letter:

"I like to see with my own eyes, smell with my own nose. All my work reveals this personal impression, almost always cruel, for, in my opinion, we are the remnant of a race approaching annihilation. Brazil will be something in the future, but the man of today, the Luso-Africano-Indian will pass out of existence, absorbed and assimilated by other, stronger races. . . .just as the primitive aborigine passed. Even as the Portuguese caused the disappearance of the Indian, so will the new races cause the disappearance of the hybrid Portuguese, whose rôle in Brazilian civilization is already fulfilled, having consisted in the vast labor of clearing the land by the destruction of the forests. The language will remain, gradually more and modified by the influence of the new milieu, so different from the Lusitanian milieu.

"Brazil is an ailing country."

Let me interrupt once again, to say that in his pamphlet "Problema Vital,” Lobato studies this problem, indicating that man will be victorious over the tropical zone through the new arms of hygiene. The pamphlet caused a turmoil throughout Brazil, and sides were at once formed, the one considering Lobato a defamer of the nation, the other seeing in the work an act of sanative patriotism. As a result, a national program of sanitation was inaugur-