ave just analyzed, become a useful citizen. Such
is the type which unfortunately is the product of an education of
three centuries...!

The parochial schools (escuelas religiosas) have given their fruit;
the lay schools (laicas) have also borne fruitage. The youths who
graduate from the latter are undoubtedly not without defects; but they
are not poisoned or forever led astray by that brutalizing superstition
sown by native and foreign impostors. None of those youths will assail
ruthlessly an ugly old woman mistaking her for a devil; he will not
dream of flying in the air launched like a balloon by an army of
devils. None shall believe that a piece of meat shall be transformed
into arms, legs, and heads as a mass offered to a pintakasi progresses;
much less can such youth conceive a Jesus Christ that would weaken
at the sight of a chest that his mother Virgin Mary would show to
remind him of his weak memory of God would forget; nor will he excuse
himself of a wrong committed against a companion of the other sex on
the pretext that he does not have with him the girdle of the Angelic
Militia; much less will he believe that, in spite of a criminal life,
he will be able to secure eternal salvation provided only he has
taken the precaution of repeating at every turn the invocation of
the so-called Trinity on Earth.

That lay education will not produce individuals who trust in protection
or recommendation to progress and triumph on earth. The lay education
is wholly democratic and will not be capable of committing the same
faults of those who, by not following their education, seek to employ
in the affairs of life those means recommended in the Novenas in
order to obtain what is desired by means of the help of the powerful,
secured by means of requests, protestations of love, and promise of
eternal devotion.

That mental conformation created by the diffusion of this superstitious
spirit is an obstacle, an insuperable barrier set up against the
development of the moral sense. We shall sow principles of morality
as the farmer who sows in the fields the seeds properly selected which
will not grow unless the soil is adequate. Sane morals is founded upon
the basis of reason; when this foundation is lacking, the moral taught
will be like a tree that is rootless and lifeless. It is not possible
that a school without god (escuela sin Dios) or the one with god can
make the seed of morals grow upon a soil prepared by the school of