another except in
their rites, clothing, and languages. I add, in what regards their
abilities and capacities--which are so good, and in general so well
inclined--that I believe that if children, either boys or girls,
were taken from Filipinas to Viscaya or to Castilla, the natives
[of those countries] would not distinguish them from the Vizcainos,
Castilians, or mountaineers. For their vices are not due so much
to their nature, as to their bad rearing and education; and they are
easily instructed both in the evil and in the good. And notwithstanding
what father Fray Gaspar, Father Murillo, and Fray Juan [Francisco]
de San Antonio have said, they would have been more successful had
they not said, with exaggeration, that it would be impossible to
write everything that they have observed of the Indians, on all the
paper that is found in China. That is a hyperbole that transcends all
faith. Thus does he continue in all that he says; and he affirms,
further, that it surpasses all that we can touch with the hands or
see with the eyes. Hence from the beginning we can state those two
rules of law: semel malus, semper praesumitur malus; and the other,
malum ex quocumque defectu. [334]...

What mystery is there in the customs and genius of the Indians
that should make them so deep and inscrutable that we cannot reach
them, sound them, and explain them? since they are Indians like all
the rest of the people of Asia, without there being more or less
in them. Therefore, "these profundities, this intricate, confused
chaos, this aggregate of contrarieties, this maze of contradictions,
are a collection of rhetorical locutions or tropes invented in
order to exaggerate and to use hyperboles in what of itself has
no mystery--these definitions remaining purely in the manner of
speech, or of the conception, of their authors; or perhaps in a mere
misapprehension formed by a critical, melancholy, or affected genius.

But since in this letter, the evil propensities of the Indians, both
men and lads, who act as servants, are set down in detail, let us see
on the other hand, somewhat of the good that the Indians possess. For
one should not write and consider only the evil, and omit as fitting
all the good, in order thereby to make the object more detestable. For,
as says a mystical writer, we must not possess the nature of the
dung-beetle, which goes always to the dungheap, but that of the bee,
which always seeks out the sweet and pleasant.