To them the Philippines owes her dawning system of instruction in the natural sciences, the soul of the nineteenth century, as she owed to the Dominicans scholasticism, already dead in spite of Leo XIII, for there is no Pope who can revive what common sense has judged and condemned.
"But where are we getting to ?" he asked with a change of tone.

"Ah, we were speaking of the present condition of the Philippines.

Yes, we are now entering upon a period of strife, or rather, I should say that you are, for my generation belongs to the night, we are passing away.

This strife is between the past, which seizes and strives with curses to cling to the tottering feudal castle, and the future, whose song of triumph may be heard from afar amid the splendors of the coming dawn, bringing the message of Good-News from other lands.

Who will fall and be buried in the moldering ruins ?" The old man paused.