Note 19 — Ecclesiastical Survey of the Philippines

“413. The very reverend father, Gaspar de San Agustin, an Augustinian and a native of Madrid, with the practical experience of forty years of life among those people, confesses, in a letter which he wrote concerning their characteristics—and which although in manuscript, deserves to be printed, for he understood those natives as far as it is possible to comprehend them—that it is so difficult to describe their characteristics that it would be more easy to define the formal object in logic; more feasible to compute the square of a circle; more discoverable to assign a fixed rule for the measurement of the degrees of longitude on the globe; and after the four knowledges of Solomon could be placed this fifth, as impossible.19 In fact, after so many years, he says that he has only been able to understand that quadraginta annis proximus fui Generationi huic, & dixi: semper hi erant corde.20 He speaks at length and from experience and with remarkable detail. Although the letter is worth printing, my lack of space does not allow me to copy it.21