The Social Cancer
A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere from the Spanish of
José Rizal
By
Charles Derbyshire
Manila
Philippine Education Company
New York: World Book Company
1912
THE NOVELS OF JOSÉ RIZAL
Translated from Spanish into English
BY CHARLES DERBYSHIRE
- THE SOCIAL CANCER (NOLI ME TANGERE)
- THE REIGN OF GREED (EL FILIBUSTERISMO)
Copyright, 1912, by Philippine Education Company.
Entered at Stationers’ Hall.
Registrado en las Islas Filipinas.
All rights reserved.[v]
Translator’s Introduction
I
“We travel rapidly in these historical sketches. The reader flies in his express train in a few minutes through a couple ofcenturies. The centuries pass more slowly to those to whom the years are doled out day by day. Institutions grow and beneficentlydevelop themselves, making their way into the hearts of generations which are shorter-lived than they, attracting love andrespect, and winning loyal obedience; and then as gradually forfeiting by their shortcomings the allegiance which had beenhonorably gained in worthier periods. We see wealth and greatness; we see corruption and vice; and one seems to follow soclose upon the other, that we fancy they must have always co-existed. We look more steadily, and we perceive long periodsof 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 eternalfeminine from her natural and normal sphere in the scheme of things there met with the same certain and signal disaster thatawaits every perversion of human activity. Beginning with a band of zealous, earnest men, sincere in their convictions, towhom the cause was all and their personalities nothing, it there, as elsewhere, passed through its usual cycle of usefulness,stagnation, corruption, and degeneration.
To the unselfish and heroic efforts of the early friars Spain in large measure owed her dominion over the Philippine Islandsand the Filipinos a marked advance on the road to civilization and nationality. In fact, after the dreams of sudden wealthfrom gold and spices had faded, the islands were retained chiefly as a missionary conquest and a stepping-stone to the broaderfields of Asia, with Manila as a depot for the Oriental trade. The records of those early years are filled with tales of courageand heroism worthy of Spain’s proudest years, as [vi]the missionary fathers labored with unflagging zeal in disinterested endeavor for the spread of the Faith and the bettermentof the condition of the Malays among whom they found