Noli Me Tangere

Introduction

THE NOVELS OF JOSE RIZAL

Translated from Spanish into English

BY CHARLES DERBYSHIRE

THE SOCIAL CANCER (NOLI ME T ANGERE)

THE REIGN OF GREED (EL FILIBUSTERISMO)

Translator's Introduction

"We travel rapidly in these historical sketches. The reader flies in

his express train in a few minutes through a couple of centuries. The

centuries pass more slowly to those to whom the years are doled out

day by day . Institutions grow and beneficently develop themselves,

making their way into the hearts of generations which are shorter-lived

than they , attracting love and respect, and winning loyal obedience;

and then as gradually forfeiting by their shortcomings the allegiance

which had been honorably gained in worthier periods. We see wealth and

greatness; we see corruption and vice; and one seems to follow so close

upon the other , that we fancy they must have always co-existed. We

look more steadily , and we perceive long periods of time, in which

there is first a growth and then a decay , like what we perceive in

a tree of the forest."

FROUDE, Annals of an English Abbey .

Monasticism's record in the Philippines presents no new general fact

to the eye of history . The attempt to eliminate the eternal feminine

from her natural and normal sphere in the scheme of things there met

with the same certain and signal disaster that awaits every perversion

of human activity . Beginning with a band of zealous, earnest men,

sincere in their convictions, to whom the cause was all and their

personalities nothing, it there, as elsewhere, passed through its

usual cycle of usefulness, stagnation, corruption, and degeneration.

T o the unselfish and heroic efforts of the early friars Spain

in large measure owed her dominion over the Philippine Islands

and the Filipinos a marked advance on the road to civilization and

nationality . In fact, after the dreams of sudden wealth from gold and

spices had faded, the islands were retained chiefly as a missionary

conquest and a stepping-stone to the broader fields of Asia, with

Manila as a depot for the Oriental trade. The records of those early

years are filled with tales of courage and heroism worthy of Spain's

proudest years, as the missionary fathers labored with unflagging

zeal in disinterested endeavor for the spread of the Faith and the

betterment of the condition of the Malays among whom they found

themselves. They won the confidence of the native peoples, gathered

them into settlements and villages, led them into the ways of peace,