in an extremely experimental science; for years and years it has been
so taught and the country has not been upset, but continues just as
ever. Now and then some little instrument descended from heaven and
was exhibited to the class from a distance, like the monstrance to
the prostrate worshipers--look, but touch not! From time to time,
when some complacent professor appeared, one day in the year was
set aside for visiting the mysterious laboratory and gazing from
without at the puzzling apparatus arranged in glass cases. No one
could complain, for on that day there were to be seen quantities of
brass and glassware, tubes, disks, wheels, bells, and the like--the
exhibition did not get beyond that, and the country was not upset.

Besides, the students were convinced that those instruments had not
been purchased for them--the friars would be fools! The laboratory
was intended to be shown to the visitors and the high officials who
came from the Peninsula, so that upon seeing it they would nod their
heads with satisfaction, while their guide would smile, as if to say,
"Eh, you thought you were going to find some backward monks! Well,
we're right up with the times--we have a laboratory!"

The visitors and high officials, after being handsomely entertained,
would then write in their _Travels_ or _Memoirs_: "The Royal
and Pontifical University of Santo Tomas of Manila, in charge of
the enlightened Dominican Order, possesses a magnificent physical
laboratory for the instruction of youth. Some two hundred and fifty
students annually study this subject, but whether from apathy,
indolence, the limited capacity of the Indian, or some other
ethnological or incomprehensible reason, up to now there has not
developed a Lavoisier, a Secchi, or a Tyndall, not even in miniature,
in the Malay-Filipino race."