The prelate who accused the public schools in the form above mentioned
has committed a lamentable error. For my part, I can say that the
accusations awakened in me a desire to investigate the causes of
immorality and of the perversion of customs which the said prelate,
and we with him, all regret. According to those who have studied
the mentality of the majority of our people, it is evident that
superstition is the enemy which we all have to combat and that is
the cause of many of the moral errors which we observe. The regular
friars as well as the secular clergy confess that the mass of the
people still finds itself subject to the superstition inherited from
our predecessors--the superstition which could be called genuinely
Philippine, that which comes from the old belief in the nunu, in the
asuang, the anito and all the spirits of the old idolatry preached
before the implantation of Catholicism by the Spanish missionaries.