the Chinaman engage in tropical countries, the industrious Chinaman,
who flees from his own country driven by hunger and want, and whose
whole ambition is to amass a small fortune? With the exception of some
porters, an occupation that the natives also follow, he nearly always
engages in trade, in commerce; so rarely does he take up agriculture
that we do not know of a single case. The Chinaman who in other
colonies cultivates the soil does so only for a certain number of
years and then retires. [4]

We find, then, the tendency to indolence very natural, and have to
admit and bless it, for we cannot alter natural laws, and without
it the race would have disappeared. Man is not a brute, he is not
a, machine; his object is not merely to produce, in spite of the
pretensions of some Christian whites who would make of the colored
Christian a kind of motive power somewhat more intelligent and less
costly than steam. Man's object is not to satisfy tile passions of
another man, his object is to seek happiness for himself and his kind
by traveling along the road of progress and perfection.

The evil is not that indolence exists more or less latently but that
it is fostered and magnified. Among men, as well as among nations,
there exist not only aptitudes but also tendencies toward good and
evil. To foster the good ones and aid them, as well as correct the
evil and repress them, would be the duty of society and governments,
if less noble thoughts did not occupy their attention. The evil is
that the indolence in the Philippines is a magnified indolence, an
indolence of the snowball type, if we may be permitted the expression,
an evil that increases in direct proportion to the square of the
periods of time, an effect of misgovernment and of backwardness,
as we said, and not a cause thereof. Others will hold the contrary