Note 1 — THE FRIAR VIEWPOINT

But one can immediately understand that teachers who taught without any charge, who might be sacristans, and Indians who wished to study voluntarily, were not fitting factors to attain the most praiseworthy end which the legislator proposed to himself; and in fact it could not have given the desired result since eighty-four years afterwards, law v, título xiii, book i, was issued by Felipe IV, without indicating the means, in Madrid, March 2, 1634, and repeated two years afterward, on November 4, which reads as follows: “We ask and request the archbishops and the bishops to provide and order the curas and missionaries of the Indians in their dioceses, by the use of the mildest means, to arrange and direct that all the Indians be taught the Spanish language, and in that language the Christian doctrine, so that they may become more capable of understanding the mysteries of our holy Catholic faith and so that other advantages may be gained for their salvation, and follow in their government and method of life.” The fulfilment of both laws [was] recorded by the royal decree of March 20, 1686,1 and those laws were at the same time extended to Filipinas, since the desire of the legislator was the same in both parts, namely, “to consult upon what is the most efficacious means for destroying the idolatries incurred at present by the majority of the Indians as was true at the beginning of their conversion, etc.,” as is said in the above-mentioned royal decree. From that decree one infers a wholesome instruction for Filipinas; but it is no wonder that the Filipinos have not learned Castilian, and that they abandon their primitive superstitions with difficulty, when the Americans of greater capacity than they, with greater means, with a powerful and constant stream of Christian civilization, carried by numerous missionaries, and a greater European emigration, after two centuries did not know the Castilian speech, and the majority were sunk in their idolatries, a thing which does not occur with the masses of the Filipinos, although they are not a little superstitious, a quality exhibited in more or less degree by numerous peoples of Europa after so many centuries of illumination.