Note 5 — San Agustin’s Letter on the Filipinos

Although your command has so great weight with me, the undertaking of performing it satisfactorily is so difficult that I doubt my ability to fulfil what you ask. It would be more easy for me, I believe, to define the formal object of logic; to give the square of a circle; to find the mathematical [side5] of the double of the cube and sphere, or to find a fixed rule for the measurement of the degrees of longitude of the terrestrial sphere; than to define the nature of the Indians, and their customs and vices. This is a memorandum-book in which I have employed myself for forty years, and I shall only say: Quadraginta annis proximus fui generationi huic, et dixi semper hi errant corde;6 and I believe that Solomon himself would place this point of knowledge after the four things impossible to his understanding which he gives in chapter XXX, verse 18 of Proverbs. Only can they tell the One who knows them by pointing to the sky and saying, Ipse cognovit figmentum nostrum.7 But in order that you may not say to me that I am thus ridding myself of the burden of the difficulty,8 without making any effort or showing any obedience, I shall relate briefly what I have observed, for it would be impossible to write everything, if one were to use all the paper that is found in China.