The wholesale baptisms have their real significance in the frame of mind receptive for the patient Christian nurture that follows.  Christianity has made its real conquests and is kept alive by Christian training, and its progress is the improvement which one generation makes upon another in the observance of its precepts.  One who has read the old Penitential books and observed the evidences they afford of the vitality of heathen practices and rites among the people in England in the early Middle Ages will not be too harsh in characterizing the still imperfect fruits of the Catholic missions of the last three centuries.

In the light, then, of impartial history raised above race prejudice and religious prepossessions, after a comparison with the early years of the Spanish conquest in America or with the first generation or two of the English settlements, the conversion and civilization of the Philippines in the forty years following Legaspi’s arrival must be pronounced an achievement without a parallel in history.  An examination of what was accomplished at the very ends of the earth with a few soldiers and a small band of missionaries will it is believed reveal the reasons for this verdict.  We are fortunate in possessing for this purpose, among other materials, a truly classic survey of the condition of the islands at the opening of the seventeenth century written by a man of scholarly training and philosophic mind, Dr. Antonio de Morga, who lived in the islands eight years in the government service. [30]

The Spaniards found in the population of the islands two sharply contrasted types which still survive—­the Malay and the Negrito.  After the introduction of Christianity the natives were commonly classified according to their religion as Indians (Christian natives), Moors [31] (Mohammedan natives), and Heathen (Gentiles) or Infidels.  The religious beliefs of the Malays were not held with any great tenacity and easily yielded to the efforts of the missionaries.  The native taste for the spectacular was impressed and gratified by the picturesque and imposing ceremonials of the church.

Their political and social organization was deficient in cohesion.  There were no well established native states but rather a congeries of small groups something like clans.  The headship of these groups or barangays was hereditary and the authority of the chief of the barangay was despotic. [32] This social disintegration immensely facilitated the conquest; and by tact and conciliation, effectively supported by arms, but with very little actual bloodshed, Spanish sovereignty was superimposed upon these relatively detached groups, whose essential features were preserved as a part of the colonial administrative machinery.  This in turn was a natural adaptation of that developed in New Spain.  Building upon the available institutions of the barangay as a unit the Spaniards aimed to familiarize and accustom the Indians to settled village life and to moderate labor.  Only under these conditions could religious training and systematic religious oversight be provided.  These villages were commonly called pueblos or reducciones, and Indians who ran away to escape the restraints of civilized life were said to “take to the hills” (remontar).