I.4.1 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 833254
In this second excerpt from Males de origem [Rio de Janeiro: H. Garnier, Livreiro-Editor, 1905], Bomfim rallies for a holistic educational system—from primary school to intellectual enterprises—that encompasses ethics and the arts. He optimistically argues that, supported by the democratic values of these core disciplines, Latin Americans will come closer to achieving utopia. As in the previous passage from the book [SEE DOCUMENT I.3.5], this translation is based on the centenary edition [A América Latina: Males de Origem (São Paulo: Topbooks, 2005), 379–83].
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Let us waste no effort regretting what was not done; let us see what has to be done, and, to be more effective, let us consider what this part of the world will be when these many millions of unproductive people represent effective social units in the competition of human activities. Instead of hoping that the illiterate [will be] enraptured with science, join together and contribute to organize schools for themselves and their children; or that, dissatisfied with their own ignorance, they come to us to ask for instruction for that which they are ignorant, let us offer them this instruction that will elevate them. Let us start from the beginning: the diffusion of primary education. Let us dust off their intelligence; awaken them. This is the path to a complete education. Let us force the issue, in a general campaign; let us call into action as many intellects as are able to respond to our appeal. Thousands of readers will stimulate our literary production and our scientific culture. Each, in turn, will have an impact upon the public, increasingly expanding and educating it. [We must support] the press, magazines, study groups, libraries, popular universities—truly popular, not imitations of academia, from which the people flee with good cause. We must do all of these and [if we do], success will be inevitable, provided that we abandon neither our conviction in the excellence of our campaign, nor the tenacity of our efforts. Moreover, the enterprise itself will help those who conduct it. From the cooperation of ideas will come the cooperation of wills—an indisputable consequence of education. It is a movement that builds on its own energy; from pure intellectual instruction will spring the principles of technical and moral education, which make democracies viable by forming morally free and productive citizens.
It is no longer simply a question of intellectual development, considered in its practical applications—sciences serving industry, for example; it is a matter of the role of intelligence in the establishment of present day societies and in the shaping of the centuries to come, a notion that we should not forget, because a society that intends to endure not only organizes its present but prepares for its future. This can happen only when the social interest is well understood.
Science is not a regime, nor does it prevail through imposition. Still, of itself, science wins over the mind and defeats obstinacy. There is nothing perhaps more edifying than hearing, in the disorder of muddled self-interest [that] serene word, [science’s] pure and natural light falling upon intellects lost in this sad and agitated state of confusion. If true progress resides in transforming man’s animal nature into a social nature, then nothing has contributed more to progress than science. Even when science acknowledges and demonstrates our true animal origins, it demonstrates with this discovery that perfectibility is inherent to life. These marvelous attributes of the spirit whose cultivation and refinement we so desire are nothing more than the expansion of faculties that are still in an embryonic stage in other types of the series to which we belong and of which we represent the highest degree of evolution. Observing and measuring the progress already made, philosopher and apostle alike can anticipate and expect great accomplishments. In earlier times, we were mere brutes, barely conscious; then we became human beings, the owners of the Earth. We created the Heavens, discovered our strength and intelligence, dreamt of goodness and justice, invented divinity and enriched it with our dreams of beauty and virtue. Today, we dispel this illusory Heaven, master our strength, assert our right to our intelligence, and perfect it. We strengthen our hearts, struggle for the realization on Earth of this paradise of happiness and justice that only yesterday seemed impossible in this world. Yet now, we are more generous and better than divinity itself. Tomorrow we will surpass all utopias.
To live is to progress; to decline is to die. Moral improvement is the development of life. But let us not forget that life does not permit itself to be diminished: if one does not want to decline, one has to accept life and live it fully and actively. To live is to progress, and to progress is to act efficiently, directing our efforts toward a predetermined plan, harmonizing aspirations with actions, bringing forth that unity which is moral beauty itself.
Let us embrace life fully; let us seek out all its sources of energy, which are not restricted to material necessities, but include also intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic needs. Let us restore these great stimuli to the forefront of progress. The need for beauty—like unselfish devotion and curiosity for knowledge—is more universal than is generally thought. Of course, we cannot demand that a wretched, ignorant person perceive the harmony of the Parthenon’s lines or that he be enraptured by one of Bach’s fugues. There are beauties that can only be appreciated after a preliminary preparation. Yet, there is no reason for aesthetic enjoyment to be the privilege of the few. [We should] expand instruction; prepare the spirits so that art will become a normal function of life. This was understood by its great apostles of modern times, such as [John] Ruskin and [William] Morris. Art has been and will continue to be a force in human evolution. [It is] a prodigious force, touching in equal measure the heart and the intellect, arousing enthusiasm and admiration. As daily bread, a diet of truth and beauty is necessary for a person to attain complete moral harmony.
“The goal of man,” said Aristotle, “is his improvement with respect to happiness.” Well-being, knowledge, freedom, love, and beauty are the tendencies that have propelled humankind for all times and that, although entangled in a terrible crisis just now, will inevitably end with the reform of centuries-old inequities. Against these, all strong and generous souls are committed, all those spirits who wish to march toward light, truth, and justice.
Let us leap into action, not wait for a fateful current to carry us to progress. Let us leap into action as one convinced that progress and happiness can be won and that the only ones who attain it are those who know how to win it. Let us look to science for its efficient and unerring resources. Emancipated by criticism, enlightened by knowledge, let us face life with confidence and strength, preparing ourselves for comfort, for fraternity, and for elevated moral and aesthetic pleasures, endeavoring to transmit to future generations the general outlines of a more perfect happiness. This will be the highest tribute we can offer our country. In doing so we would be patriots, being at the same time essentially humans, because the only comprehensible and noble patriotism is that which improves the conditions of existence in each country, uniting all people in their struggle for life, uniting all countries in the direction towards humanity and civilization. Let us consecrate into loftier expression the need to love the horizons and landscapes revealed to us by nature. Let us give moral significance to this natural interest, to those who taught us how to live, to the generations that maintained the nurturance indispensible to our rekindled devotions.
With these feelings, all aspiration is noble and the heart, already impassioned and vigorous, will become stronger and exalt in evocation of its own dreams. Throughout this continent, freedom and progress will unite peoples in friendship, justice, and beauty. A serene, happy, and healthy democracy will appear, confronting life and serving it, marching toward a truly human glory in the triumphal concert of happy and creative endeavors, under the light of vast, pure horizons, like those that extend across our cordilleras.
Utopia… Utopia… the vulgar wisdom will repeat. Utopia, yes: let us be utopians, very utopian, provided that we do not sterilize our ideal, expecting its realization from some force intrinsic to the utopia itself. Let us be utopians, provided that we work. “Without the utopians of the past, men even today would be living in caves, miserable and naked. It was utopians who sketched out the lines of the first city. From generous dreams came beneficial realities. Utopia is the principle of all progress, and the outline for a better future.”
The conservative and the prudent will condemn and despise Utopias; they are like Marthas [to use a biblical archetype], absorbed in common banality that has become automatic with repeated use. We desire tomorrow’s glory: a happy America, with its temperate climate, under the splendor of its sky, industrious and peaceful in social communion, affectionate and fraternal with the natural expansiveness of its instinctive cordiality, estranged from the arrogant selfishness that debases other civilizations. Let “the dead bury their dead;” let us turn to productive action, devote all our energies to life, and it will lead us to progress and victory, as it leads the tree to heaven and the light.