Note 173 — San Agustin’s Letter on the Filipinos

77. The bishop of La Puebla, Don Juan Palafox,173 wrote a keen treatise on the virtues of the Indians of Nueva España, in which his uncommon intellect and his holy and good intention are displayed more clearly than is the truth of his argument on the subject; for in a curious way he endeavors to make virtues of all their vices and evil inclinations. For in what they merit before God through their wills, they do not merit if it be the impelling force of their natural inclination and manner of living, because absuetiis non fit passio.174 One cannot, indeed, compare the voluntary poverty of St. Francis with that of the Indians, which is born of laziness and full of greed; for theirs is the infamous poverty which Virgil places in hell: et turpis egestas.175 And just as the economy of a poor wretch is not reckoned as fasting, so it will not be proper to say that if St. Antony176 went barefoot, the Indians do the same; and that they live on certain roots, as did the fathers of the Thebaid.177 For the fasting and the austerities of St. Arsenius178 had a different impelling motive—since he left the pleasures and esteem of the court of the emperor Theodosius179—than that which they can have, being so born and reared, and never having seen anything else. Hence, Ovid says of the Getas that they left the delights and comforts of Roma, and returned to seek the poverty and misery to which they were accustomed in Pontus: