Note 9 — San Agustin’s Letter on the Filipinos
Reading edition
2. The knowledge of men has been considered by the most erudite persons as a difficult thing. Dificile est, noscere hominem animal varium et versipelle.9 Man is a changeable theater of transformations. The inconstancies of his ages resemble the variation of the year. A great knowledge of man did that blind man of the eighth chapter of St. Mark have who said, with miraculous sight, that he saw men as trees: Video homines velut arbores ambulantes.10 For the tree in the four seasons of the year has its changes as has man in his four ages; and thus said the English poet Oven: