It is obvious that it was impracticable for the Indians to learn Spanish under the mission system.  For the pastor of a pueblo of several hundred families to teach the children Spanish was an impossibility.  A few words or simple phrases might be learned, but the lack of opportunity for constant or even frequent practice of the language in general conversation would make their attainments in it far below those of American grammar-school children in German in cities where that has been a compulsory study. [142] As long as the mission system isolated the pueblos from contact with the world at large, it of necessity followed that the knowledge of Spanish would be practically limited to such Indians as lived in Manila or the larger towns, or learned it in the households of the Friars.  Slavery with its forced transplanting has been the only means by which large masses of alien or lower races have been lifted into the circle of European thought and endowed with a European language.  If such a result is secured in the future in any large measure for the Filipino, it can be accomplished only by the translation of English or Spanish literature into the Tagal and other languages, on a scale not less generous than the work of the Friars in supplying the literature of religious edification.  This will be a work of not less than two or three generations, and of a truly missionary devotion.

We have now surveyed in its general aspects the old regime in the Philippines, and supplied the necessary material upon which to base a judgment of this contribution of Spain to the advancement of civilization.  In this survey certain things stand out in contrast to the conventional judgment of the Spanish colonial system.  The conquest was humane, and was effected by missionaries more than by warriors.  The sway of Spain was benevolent, although the administration was not free from the taint of financial corruption.  Neither the islands nor their inhabitants were exploited.  The colony in fact was a constant charge upon the treasury of New Spain.  The success of the enterprise was not measured by the exports and imports, but by the number of souls put in the way of salvation.  The people received the benefits of Christian civilization, as it was understood in Spain in the days of that religious revival which we call the Catholic Reaction.  This Christianity imposed the faith and the observances of the mediaeval church, but it did for the Philippine islanders who received it just what it did for the Franks or Angles a thousand years earlier.  It tamed their lives, elevated the status of women, established the Christian family, and gave them the literature of the devotional life.