If the Spanish government desired that the Castilian language be rapidly diffused in Filipinas, the normal school or the teachers who graduated from it were not the most efficient and suitable means, but the establishment in the Filipino villages of five hundred thousand Spanish families. The servants of those families, and familiarity and converse with the native families would have done in a short time, what never would have succeeded by means of the normal teachers, and which the other educational schools in which the native dialects would not be allowed to be spoken, would have taken centuries in obtaining. It was observed that in the ports and in the capitals where the Spanish element was numerous, almost all the Indians spoke Castilian. Consequently, this same thing would have happened in the villages in which fifty or one hundred Spanish families would have been settled. Neither was it the mission of the parish-priest religious to teach Castilian to the Indians, nor did they have time to dedicate themselves to it. Neither would they have succeeded in that in a long time, not even with all their prestige and competency. Nor did they need as parish priests that the Indian should know Castilian, although as Spaniards they desired it, and very greatly. For, very strongly did it come to them that language, religion, and customs, are strong chains which united mother countries to colonies. No one could be in a position to know the needs of the country, to feel its forces and appreciate its progress as could the parish-priest religious. Individual members of respectable communities consecrated to the spiritual and material happiness of the Indians, passed, but the spirit which guided their footsteps toward so noble an end, without separating itself any distance from the preconceived plan, always existed. When the opportunity to give greater amplitude to education, and to open up new and vaster horizons to the studious youth of the country, came, the parish priests were the ones who recognized that need and satisfied it. By a royal decree of June 8, 1585, King Don Felipe II arranged for the foundation of the college of San José, which was destined for the education and teaching of the children of Spaniards resident in Filipinas. Lessons in Latin, rhetoric, and philosophy, were given in that college by distinguished Jesuit fathers. The restrictions placed as to the number and quality of the pupils did not satisfy the need for more centers of learning, which the Filipino youth urgently demanded within a little time. His Excellency, the archbishop of Manila, Señor Benavides, a Dominican, projected the foundation of the college of Santo Tomás, aided by his Excellency, Don Fray Diego de Soria of the same order, bishop of Nueva Segovia. [107] With the one thousand pesos fuertes donated by Señor Benavides and the four thousand by Señor Soria, and the acquisition of the libraries of both, the works were commenced in the year 1610.