dropped out on its way from Mexico toward the interior of China,
the gulf whence it never returned.

The pernicious example of the dominators in surrounding themselves
with servants and despising manual or corporal labor as a thing
unbecoming the nobility and chivalrous pride of the heroes of so many
centuries; those lordly airs, which the natives have translated into
tila ka castila, and the desire of the dominated to be the equal of the
dominators, if not essentially, at least in their manners: all this had
naturally to produce aversion to activity and fear or hatred of work.

Moreover, 'Why work?' asked many natives. The curate says that the rich
man will not go to heaven The rich man on earth is liable to all kinds
of trouble, to be appointed a cabeza de barangay, to be deported if
an uprising occurs, to be forced banker of the military chief of the
town, who to reward him for favors received seizes his laborers and
his stock, in order to force him to beg for mercy, and thus easily
pays up. Why be rich? So that all the officers of justice may have
a lynx eye on your actions, so that at the least slip enemies may be
raised up against you, you may be indicted, a whole complicated and
labyrinthine story may be concocted against you, for which you can
only get away, not by the thread of Ariadne but by Danae's shower
of gold, and still give thanks that you are not kept in reserve for
some needy occasion? The native, whom they pretend to regard as an
imbecile, is not so much so that he does not understand that it is
ridiculous to work himself to death to become worse off. A proverb
of his says that the pig is cooked in its own lard, and as among
his bad qualities he has the good one of applying to himself all the
criticisms and censures he prefers to live miserable and indolent,
rather than play the part of the wretched beast of burden.