"In regard to the nature and understanding of the Indians," says Retana, "speaking in general, they are more clever than the American Indians. [111] They readily learn any art, and with the same readiness they imitate any work which is placed before them. They make fine clerks and are employed in the accounting offices and other offices in that duty. For, besides the fact that they write well, they are excellent accountants, have capacity for directing a lawsuit, and very sharp in getting the parties to the lawsuit all tangled up. There are good stonemasons, and musicians among them. But in all these things, they only reach a certain degree which they never surpass, either because of laziness, or for the lack of intellect, which we must suppose to be sufficiently limited. For they never invent anything, and all is reduced to their skill of imitation. Those who give themselves to the sciences never surpass a mediocrity in their comprehension. "He who has had to do with the Indians of Filipinas can do no less than assent to this truth. We find them more clever than ourselves in learning any mechanical work, but more stupid in whatever depends upon the understanding or on the imagination. In so brief a time do they learn the trade of artists, musicians, embroiderers, cobblers, tailors, and whatever is reduced to the mechanical, that they exercise it fairly well in little time. If they are not satisfied with it, they readily give it up and learn another trade. There are Indians who have gone through all those trades, and they have filled them all well. But not one of them has ever surpassed mediocrity. There has never been an artisan who has invented any improvement in the trade which he learned. They are most ingenious in imitating what they see, but they never invent anything. If those men had the talents of Europeans, why is it possible that one cannot find in three hundred years one who has added anything to what was taught him? "I can affirm of the Filipinos with whom I have lived for more than sixteen years, that they are handy in every kind of mechanism which is shown to them. They are capable of imitating the most curious works, but they can invent nothing, for they lack imagination and fancy, and are very obtuse in the abstract sciences because they lack understanding.