Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/158

 152 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

good and bad racial effects of fighting. Our Moro population is one which has made fighting its chief business for centuries. The Moros entered the Philippines in the fifteenth century^ and for the 450 years since that time they have not done much except fighting. Because of the school of ethics in which they are brought up, they are the best fighters in this part of the world. Give them the same weapons and they would be practically certain to overcome an equal number of Fili- pinos. At any rate, if both sides were given primitive weapons, this would be true. From such evidence as we have, it seems safe to con- clude that four or five centuries ago, the Moro was the best man in the Philippines in almost every respect. To-day, he is decidedly the inferior of the Filipino for every purpose except fighting. I will make this gen- eral statement without any reservation in spite of the fact that the Island of Jolo had a bigger percentage of the population able to read and write fifteen years ago than did any Christian province in the Archipelago. The Moro is uniformly physically inferior to the Filipino, and this is true of both men and women. It is not altogether the Moros' fault that the development of schools has been very backward in the Moro province, but I have had enough experience with individuals to conclude, for myself, that the Moro of to-day is intellectually inferior to the Filipino. Another effect of centuries of fighting is that there is a very conspicuous tendency to prompt degeneration when war is stopped. When the Moro is kept from fighting, as has happened in certain dis- tricts, notably around Zamboanga, and is given the same opportunity which the Filipino has had in most places to develop industrially, in- stead of doing this he becomes as worthless as a human being can be. It may still prove to be possible to develop the Moro industrially, but it i& a certain fact that he makes practically no start at all in developing himself. It is this degeneration when the fighting ceases which I would call the most conspicuous evidence of the destructive effect of centuries of fighting. As a matter of opinion merely, I would say that the Moro will admit of being developed. It is my impression from living among various people, that there is very little difference in their susceptibility to development and, to this extent, I believe that even the bad effect of warfare can be overrated. War does more damage by far in removing those who could be leaders in development, and cutting off the capacity for leadership from the following generations, than it does by lowering the capacity for being developed of the body of survivors.

But, we have in the Philippines still other races than Moros and Filipinos. Among these are the Negritos, about whom I know very little. Possibly they are low enough in the scale of humanity so that they can not be developed as well as most people can be. But there are in the mountain districts of Luzon and Mindanao so-called wild people, pure pagans, who have through all the centuries fought among them- selves, just as primitive men must have fought through ages, practically

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