*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 73848 ***
THE HERO OF THE FILIPINOS
THE STORY OF JOSÉ RIZAL
POET, PATRIOT AND MARTYR
BY
CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL
AND
E. B. RODRIGUEZ
Illustrated with Photographs
THE CENTURY CO.
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1923
TO THE MEMORY OF
APOLINARIO MABINI
PHILOSOPHICAL DEMOCRAT
GALLANT SOLDIER OF THE COMMON GOOD
PREFATORY NOTE
The great storehouses of knowledge about this extraordinary being are
W. E. Retana’s “Vida y Escritos del Dr. José Rizal” and the “Lineage,
Life, and Labors of José Rizal,” by Professor Austin Craig of the
Philippines University. Neither is accessible to the general American
public. Retana’s ponderous volume has never been translated. Professor
Craig’s work was published in Manila but not in the United States and
is to be found in only a few of the public libraries. Prefixed to
Charles Derbyshire’s excellent translation of Rizal’s “Noli Me Tangere”
is a biographical sketch, all too brief, of the author of the novel,
but even this is denied to most American readers, for it, too, is
published only in Manila.
The notes that Rizal left about himself, few, fragmentary, and sternly
reticent, throwing a faint light upon his psychology and character but
next to nothing upon the stirring events of his life, are known only in
the Philippines. In an English magazine article published in 1902, Sir
Hugh Clifford, formerly governor of Ceylon, reviewed and estimated this
strange career, but no more than in outline. Three American magazines
in the space of twenty-five years have devoted each a page or so to the
same subject. Buried in that monumental work, Blair and Robertson’s
“Philippine Islands,” is liberal store of information about the
historic background of the events hereinafter to be set forth, though
few readers seem to avail themselves of even this assistance. John
Foreman’s well known book with the same title has an interesting
chapter about Rizal and his fate. An abbreviated translation of “Noli
Me Tangere,” published in New York in 1900, contained a short account
of his life and a version of his last poem. These, with fugitive
references, are virtually the sum of the Rizal material the most
resolute searcher has hitherto been able to find on American shelves.
Retana’s work is interesting and abounding in pertinent facts, but so
overloaded with documents and so prone to febrile exhilaration that it
could never be adapted to general circulation. Unluckily, too, it is
not always free from prejudice and not always accurate. Professor Craig
was the ideal investigator. With indefatigable patience he went over
the entire drama, beginning with the arrival of Lam-co in the
Philippines more than two hundred years before, and tracing the family
to Rizal’s own day. He visited most of the places where Rizal had
lived; he interviewed relatives, friends, acquaintances; he searched
records, he compared documents, he weighed testimonies; he wrote with
sympathy, he overstepped not the due bounds of reserve; and he produced
a book that so far as it goes is a model of honest inquiry.
The present work is founded chiefly upon his discoveries and Retana’s,
carefully compared, checked by reference to the writings of Derbyshire
and to Rizal’s own diary, notes, and scant narrative; checked also by
the corrections of Dr. De Tavera and others, and augmented by later
revelations. Where a discrepancy has appeared in these records the
authors have sought the best obtainable advice and tried to follow the
best of the accepted authorities. In a few instances (since there are
gaps in the story now unlikely to be filled) it has been necessary to
adopt the version of an incident or the explanation of an act that
seemed the most natural to a man in Rizal’s situation and the best
adjustable to his character and convictions. Every recurrent “Rizal
day” in the Philippines brings out thoughtful studies of the national
hero, additional reminiscences, or the results of original research
work, all by native writers. Of this abundant material the authors have
availed themselves, and thus have been able to enlarge or to correct
many episodes.
The authors are under obligations to the direction of the Philippine
Library at Manila, which most generously put at their disposal all of
its great collection of literature and objects relating to Rizal; to
Mr. Fernando Canon for his interesting personal reminiscences; to the
Hon. Jaime C. de Veyra, late resident commissioner from the Philippines
to the United States, long a collector of Rizaliana, for rich material
as well as for unstinted and invaluable assistance; to the Hon. Isauro
Gabaldon, present resident commissioner, for sympathetic encouragement;
to Senator Sandiko for useful data; to Miss Sevilla for her
investigations concerning Leonora Rivera; and to many good friends in
Manila and elsewhere that have contributed suggestions and corrected
errors. Mr. Benito Soliven’s masterly summary of Rizal’s work in
science and Dr. Eliseo Hervas’s estimate of Rizal’s place as a poet
have been most helpful. Of Dr. T. H. Pardo de Tavera’s admirable
treatise “El Carácter de Rizal” (Manila, 1918) free use has been made.
Mr. Pañina’s “Murió el Doctor Rizal Cristianamente?” has been carefully
studied. For the historical part of the narrative the authors have
consulted chiefly Fernández, Foreman, Barrows, and the great work of
Blair and Robertson.
The citations from “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo” in the
ensuing pages are from the translations by Charles Derbyshire, both
published by the Philippine Education Company, Manila, 1912.
To understand Rizal and his strange story it is necessary to understand
the environment into which he was born and against which he protested.
As any description written now of Spanish rule as it really was in the
Philippines would seem to American readers of these days improbable or
even fantastical, the needed background is supplied, so far as
possible, in Rizal’s own words.
Aside from the human interest that would at any time attend a life so
tragic, certain chief reasons have seemed to the authors sufficient to
justify the appearance now of such a book:
1. The hope to make available to American readers the story of the
great man and national hero of the people the United States has
undertaken to lead to national independence.
2. At a time when race antagonisms seem to have been revived and
emphasized, the fundamental truths about the universal household are
naturally obscured. Lest we forget how foolish, in the end, are the
pretended racial superiorities, it may be well to take note of this
brown man that revealed a genius so great, a mind so strangely
resourceful, so wide a range in achievement, so unusual a character,
while performing a service so momentous. Of a race too lightly esteemed
by Caucasians, he left a record of which the foremost Caucasian people
might justly be proud.
3. When the tide is running backward through the world and some men
scoff at democracy and some men doubt it, there may be profit in
turning to the story of this long-drawn-out struggle against autocracy
to observe once more how inevitable, against all oppositions or frantic
arguings, is the democratic advance.
4. A temporary fashion of detraction having left not even Lancelot
brave nor Galahad clean, it may be worth while to revive the fact that,
after all, men have lived on this earth that had other than merely
selfish aims and felt other than merely sensual impulses, and find an
example in this Malay.
5. When the world is resounding with the echoes of a terrible war, and
hatreds seem to possess the souls of men, it may be well to consider
the career and influence of one that sought reforms by peaceful means,
repudiated force, and chose for his motto a sentiment broad enough to
cover all human failings and cure most human hurts:
To understand all is to forgive all.
C. E. R. New York, June 25, 1923.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I A People’s Wrongs 3
II School-Days and First Impressions 28
III First Contacts with the Enemy 51
IV Voices of Prophecy 78
V “Noli Me Tangere” 97
VI Leonora Rivera 118
VII Again in the Philippines 130
VIII The Grapes of Wrath 161
IX Philippine Independence 172
X Filipino Indolence 181
XI What Manner of Man 202
XII “El Filibusterismo” 215
XIII The Safe-Conduct 233
XIV The Exile of Dapitan 246
XV The Katipunan 267
XVI “I Came from Martyrdom unto this Peace” 289
XVII Results and Influences 314
Appendices 337
A Rizal Bibliography 371
Index 383
ILLUSTRATIONS
Dr. José Rizal Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
The house at Calamba in which Rizal was born 32
The Ateneo de Manila 64
Leaves from Rizal’s travel notes and sketches through Europe 81
Drawings by Rizal 112
The original cover of the great novel, “Noli Me Tangere” 129
Photograph of an oil painting of his sister by Rizal—Miss
Saturnina Rizal 144
Wood carving by Rizal 161
Sculpture by Rizal when a mere student, “The Power of Science
over Death” 176
Remnants from Rizal’s Library 208
The outline of the constitution of the “Liga Filipina” 240
Rizal’s cell at Fort Santiago 257
Specimens of Rizal’s modeling when an exile at Dapitan, both
self-explanatory 264
Photograph of the original of “My Last Farewell” 304
The Rizal Monument at the Luneta decorated for Rizal Day,
December 30 321
A float, Rizal Day, December 30, 1922 328
THE HERO
OF THE FILIPINOS
CHAPTER I
A PEOPLE’S WRONGS
A futile insurrection had been followed by terrible reprisals and a
hardening everywhere of the articulated tyranny, terrorism, and
espionage with which the Government ruled. Such from the beginning had
been its practice in the long and uninspiring record of the Spanish
occupation of the Philippines: sore oppression leading to inevitable
revolt and then savage vengeance that sowed the seed of more revolt.
Now, as always in that delirious procedure, innocent natives were swept
to punishment indiscriminately with the guilty; men that had taken part
in the uprising and men that had never heard of it. With the rest of
these victims of insensate rage, marched, on the morning of February
28, 1872, three beloved priests and servants of God, of whose
complicity in the plot was never a shred of ponderable evidence. One of
them, lifting up his voice in prayer for his assassins as he went
along, was eighty-five years old. Not his years nor his gray hairs nor
those good works that had brought him honor [1] availed to save Father
Mariano Gomez from the most ignominious of deaths. With Fathers Burgos
and Zamora, he was garroted on Bagumbayan Field, fronting the sea at
Manila; a place consecrated in the Filipino mind to memories terrible
and yet grand. Native poets and orators that have seen there every
blade of grass springing from the blood of heroes are hardly
over-imaginative. On that spot to the same cause the same dull power
sacrificed victim after victim, ending with the nation’s greatest and
best.
But now, in 1872, forgotten medieval brutalities seemed to be brought
back to darken life in a region the sunniest and of right the most
cheerful. Prisoners were tortured with instruments the world believed
to exist only in museums; tortured with thumb-screws, great pincers,
and machines of devilish ingenuity that produced and reiterated the
agonies of drowning. [2] The whip was busy in the hands of men hired
for their expert knowledge of how it could be used to yield the largest
fruition of pain; many a wretched Filipino that had in his heart no
more of disloyalty than you or I was flogged naked in the presence of
officers in whose ears his shrieks seemed to sound like music. Hysteria
and fear in the minds of the dominant class were added to the racial
hatred always festering there. Under the empire of this triad of the
beast, men that had worn the gloss of the almost classic society of
Madrid became in the Philippines no better than hooting devils.
To the typical haughty Spaniard there the Filipino was an Indio, an
inferior creature designed to render service to the white man’s needs
and to receive the white man’s blows. Each successive generation of
rulers had learned at least once, and always with astonishment and
disgust, that the lowly Indio was capable of combinations and
resistances that sometimes shook the walls of Malacañan itself and
started painful visions of massacres and wild fleeings. From the
beginning to the end of the story, it was a discovery that first exiled
reason and then multiplied work to the executioner. Yet the knowledge
gained in this way by one generation never seemed to enlighten the
next: each revolt created in its turn the same astonishment, as if for
the first time in human experience wronged men had turned against their
wrongers. Each generation, therefore, had the same obtuse notion of
violent repression as the only answer to the natives’ complaint, a
concept that each left with additions of its own to its successor.
Hence the complex savageries of 1872, which might be regarded as in a
way accretionary; not a soul in the governing class seeming to suspect,
despite all this rich experience, that the essence of the slayings was
no better than one revenge making ready for another.
In those evil days millions of Filipinos rendered to the dominant
tyranny what it compelled them to render and kept alive in their proud
hearts the longing for justice, the love of their country, and a
respect for their race. One of these, Francisco Rizal Mercado, was then
living in Calamba, a little town on the west shore of the great lake of
Laguna de Bay. Manila was twenty-five miles to the northward; the tall
mountains of Luzon, Mount Makiling and others, gloomed or shone south
and west; the plains around were fertile and well cultivated; it was a
pleasant and profitable region. Francisco Mercado was of some substance
and a character so excellent that all the country-side knew and honored
him; a sturdy, resolute, reasoning man, wide-eyed, square-headed. He
had prospered by diligence and deserving; his large two-storied
dwelling was the best in Calamba. Overawing guns and the military
checked his spirit but never daunted it. In his house the Government’s
key-hole listeners and hired porch-climbers were defied, and no one
hesitated to discuss the evils that had befallen the land.
One of the most detested instruments of the Spanish supremacy was a
body of troops called the Civil Guard, [3] a kind of military police
charged with ferreting out disloyalty and the signs of revolt. In the
strained relations between Government and governed that followed the
cruelties of 1872, it may be imagined how zestfully the Civil Guards
pursued their peculiar calling. Domiciliary visits were their
specialty, sudden and without warrant; a species of terrorism not then
practised anywhere in Europe outside of Russia and Turkey. A squad of
these visitors was in the habit of watching Calamba and the neighboring
town of Biñan, and when it was Calamba that they were favoring with
their attention, the lieutenant commanding quartered himself and his
horse upon the Mercados, where he could find the best fare and the best
fodder in town.
The crops in 1871 had not been good in that region. Mr. Mercado’s store
of fodder diminished until he had barely enough to supply his own live
stock. When next the lieutenant came the situation was explained to
him, and with every politeness he was asked to bait his horse
elsewhere.
He chose to take the request as an affront. Reciprocal hatreds were
thick and rife around him; he conceived that in some way his honor as a
Spaniard had been impaired by a “miserable Indio,” and he swore
revenge. [4]
About the same time the unfortunate Mercado managed to offend another
Spaniard still more powerful. For all such visitors to Calamba he kept
a kind of gratuitous hotel; hospitality was and is a sacred and
inviolable rite among his people. The judge of the local district,
conferring upon the Mercados thus the honor of his uninvited presence,
fancied that his reception lacked something of cordiality and ceremony.
As to this, he may have been right; in the hearts of most intelligent
Filipinos of those days the feelings toward official Spaniards were not
likely to be exuberantly warm. The judge, like the lieutenant before
him, deemed his Spanish honor to have suffered and went away with a
similar appetite for vengeance, a lust to which the example of their
Government richly incited them.
For judge and lieutenant the opportunity came more quickly than they
could have hoped. At this neighboring town of Biñan lived José Alberto
Realonda (formerly Alonzo), a half-brother of Mrs. Mercado. He was
deservedly of mark in his province; his father had been an engineer
whose abilities were recognized by Spain in an order of knighthood that
the son inherited, an order equivalent to a baronetcy in England; José
Alberto himself had been at school in Calcutta, spoke English well, and
had traveled widely. It was at his home in Biñan that Sir John Bowring,
[5] the English linguist and traveler, had been entertained; and
Bowring had put into his book on the Philippines a graceful paragraph
about his host and entertainment, the good taste with which the
Realonda house was furnished, the excellent cooking set before its
guests.
Don José Alberto had married young, and, as the event showed, not
wisely. His wife was his cousin. They quarreled and separated, and the
wife seems to have set afoot wild and fantastic stories, injurious to
her husband. Divorces were difficult in the Philippines.
From material no better than these the lieutenant now manufactured
against Mrs. Mercado and her brother a charge of conspiracy to murder
Mrs. Realonda. It was a preposterous tale, but to such tales the
institutions that, in those parts, by a figure of speech, were called
courts of justice were in the habit of lending a ready ear if thereby
they served any end of the dominant power or gratified a powerful
Spaniard. In probably no other corner of the world with a pretense to
Christian civilization was the judicial system so farcical; the next
developments were typical of the conditions under which seven million
people dwelt at the mercy of perjurers, adventurers, and thieves. With
joy the incensed judge received the accusation and ordered Mrs. Mercado
to be arrested and imprisoned in the provincial jail.
This, although but left-handed and imperfect revenge, accorded with the
ideas and practices of the governing class. The grievances of the judge
and the lieutenant, if they had any, were against Mr. Mercado; they
evened the score by striking not at him but at his wife.
Incomprehensible or almost insane as this will seem to a healthier
sense of honor, it was a custom of which we shall find other and more
painful instances. Suppose the governing class, or a member of it, to
believe the much cherished supremacy of the white race to demand that
an example be made of an offending native. No nice discrimination was
deemed necessary. If the offender was not available, retribution could
still be inflicted upon the offender’s wife, or upon his children or
even upon his brother-in-law or his great aunt, if he had no children,
or if his wife was not within striking distance. In fairness to the
Spaniards we are to note that this singular reversion was not a product
of nationality but of geography; many a man defended vicarious
vengeance in the Philippines that would have scorned it in Spain, so
wonderful are the moral idiocies into which imperialism drives us.
Mrs. Mercado was ordered from her home to the prison at Santa Cruz, the
provincial capital, at the other side of the lake. Ordinarily, traffic
with Calamba was by steamer; but a road, rough and ill made, led along
the shore. The more to taste the pleasures of his revenge, the judge
ordered Mrs. Mercado to be conducted by this road and on foot; that is
to say, about twenty miles and in the sun.
It will later appear in this narrative that she was no ordinary woman;
she came from a household that believed in liberty; she seems to have
had a lofty spirit and a certain dignified self-mastery not rare among
Filipino women. All about that part of the province she was known for
her charities and good neighborliness. Her compatriots liked her. When,
therefore, trudging along the shore road under the custody of a guard,
she came at the evening of the first day to a village, she was received
by its inhabitants with outpourings of sympathy and an invitation to
lodge at the best house in the place instead of the village lockup as
the judge had thoughtfully intended. She accepted the invitation; but
with insatiable malice he had followed to see how his orders were
obeyed. When he found the prisoner well bestowed instead of undergoing
the miseries of the filthy prison, a madness of rage came upon him. He
broke down the door of the house where his victim was sheltered, and,
judge as he was, hesitated not to assault with his cane both the
unlucky guard that had shown her lenity and the owner of the house that
had received her. [6]
He was as merciful as the judicial system he adorned; as intelligent
and as well ordered. One of the least of its offenses was that this
same hedge-row magistrate, at whose order she had been arrested to
gratify his spite, was also to be the prosecuting attorney, when she
should be brought to trial, and the judge before whom her fate should
be decided. Mr. Mercado, meanwhile, had been putting forth every
peaceful means to rescue his wife from this disaster. He had secured an
attorney, who now presented a petition that her case should not be
allowed to come before a judge so manifestly prejudiced against her.
While Mrs. Mercado lay in jail, this appeal went before the supreme
court, which sustained it and ordered the prisoner’s release. Before
she could be set free the unjust judge brought a new charge against
her, that her petition alleging prejudice on his part constituted
contempt of court.
On this she continued to be a prisoner until another appeal could be
made to the supreme assize. When it had been reached and argued,
Dogberry wisdom seated upon this august bench upheld the court below
and found that such a petition was indeed contempt. How, that being the
case, a prisoner could ever escape from a court or judge manifestly
hostile to her, these eminent authorities did not suggest. But as Mrs.
Mercado had already been in jail much longer than the term of the
sentence passed upon her for contempt, they ordered her liberation.
It was now to be supposed that the end of this business had been
reached, vengeance had been satisfied, the crime of not feeding the
lieutenant’s horse had been atoned for, and the woman might return to
her family. Not in the Philippines, certainly. Before the prison doors
could open, a new charge was brought against her.
She was alleged by the judge-prosecutor-tribunal to have committed
theft. [7]
Here is an incident luminous upon the society of that day and region;
we had better pursue it. All this time, Mrs. Mercado’s half-brother,
José Alberto, the engineer, whose unfortunate marriage had wrought so
much of trouble, had been a prisoner in the same jail, similarly beset
with accusing inventions. He had a moderate fortune; therefore the
story went around that he had much money concealed about him. The scent
of the peso was ever strong in the nostrils of the jail officials and
court attendants. When the gold could not be found in José Alberto’s
cell, the searchers for it reasonably concluded that the half-sister
must have taken it, possibly by means of an astral presence or through
some form of witchcraft.
For this rank imagining there was even less of basis than there had
been for the conspiracy charge; yet it was months in falling apart.
When it had dissolved in its own absurdity another quite as unfounded
took its place. Justice à la espagnole—in the Philippines. Two years
passed in these futilities. It was apparently the purpose of the
authorities to keep their helpless victim in prison the rest of her
life.
From such a fate she was now rescued by another incident not less than
her imprisonment typical of misgovernment under which the country
groaned. The governor-general of all the Philippines, representative in
his single person of the might and majesty of Spain, came to Calamba on
a tour. Among the entertainments offered in his honor was dancing by
children. One of the little girls by her grace and beauty particularly
won the governor-general’s applause. He asked her what he could do for
her. She said he could release her mother from prison. She was Mrs.
Mercado’s daughter, and by this detour and purified recrudescence of
Salome and Herod was Mrs. Mercado snatched at last from her persecutors
and got again to her home. [8]
It was a populous household that welcomed her return; she had already
borne eleven children to her husband, rearing them with an
old-fashioned and sedulous care not yet out of vogue in the
Philippines. Immigration had much affected the original Island strains;
on both sides the family was of mixed descent. One of Mr. Mercado’s
ancestors was Lam-co, a Chinaman of means and character that came to
the Islands in the latter part of the seventeenth century. He settled
at Biñan, was converted to Christianity, and was baptized in 1697,
taking the name of Domingo. At Biñan he married the daughter of another
Chinaman, whose wife was a mestiza, or half-caste Filipino. From this
time on Chinese blood was mixed with Malay [9] until in 1847 Francisco
Mercado, descendant of Lam-co, married Teodora Alonzo, a Filipino lady
of a distinguished family, partly Chinese in ancestry, and came to live
at Calamba. It was her lot, twenty-five years later, to be the victim
of the strange story of persecution and villainy here related.
The seventh of her children, José, was then eleven years old and a
student in a preparatory school in Manila. Upon his mind the reports
that came to him of the successive steps in her degradation stamped
themselves as if in iron. Even when he had become a mature man, famous,
accomplished, absorbed in studies and achievements at the other side of
the busy world, the thought of that great wrong haunted and goaded him.
Yet it had been no novelty, even in his short experience; it had been
no more than a focus, upon the one household he knew best, of wrongs
with which other households were familiar and of which he had often
heard. All his conscious days he had been aware, and ever better aware,
of the cold, black, implacable despotism that had yoked and now drove
and lashed his people. He knew well the hateful excesses of the Civil
Guard, the license and arrogance of the governing class, the extortion
and thefts, the infinite scorn in which the subject race was held, the
intolerable parody of justice, the bitter jest of the code and the
court-room, the flogging of men, the violating of women, the protected
murderers, the rapists that went untouched and unabashed. When he was
only five years old he used to sit on the shore of that beautiful green
lake, the Laguna de Bay, and look across it and wonder if the people
that lived on the other side were as wretched as the people of Calamba,
whether they were beaten, kicked and trodden upon, whether they dwelt
in the same terror of the Civil Guards and the flogging-rods. [10] He
said years afterward that even then he had a distinct conviction that
these things were not necessary and that there must be some region on
the earth where its children could be happy and enjoy the sunshine, the
flowers, and the beautiful things that seemed made for their delight.
Many of the troubles that fell upon his neighbors, or were laid upon
them by the existing System, were troubles about land; and before ever
the malicious lieutenant had begun his revenges upon the family, young
José was familiar with stories of the wrongs the so-called courts
inflicted upon tenants and the men that tilled the farms. It was
miserable business for any child to master, if he was to make his way
through life as anything but a gloomy misanthrope. Yet such things for
his people made the world into which he had come. Doubtless much may be
said to excuse the System the Spaniards maintained in the Philippines:
they had inherited it, they had not the skill nor the inspiration to
better it, and the like extenuations; when all is said, it remains but
hideously stupid and cruel. In the beginning it was medievalism,
neither better nor worse than was to be found in the sixteenth century
in the most of Europe. Planted upon the other side of the globe as if
upon another planet, it missed all the vivifying and enlightening
influences that drew Europe out of the slough. The Philippines stuck as
they were; Europe lumbered ahead. In all the world one could not find
another such phenomenon, the sixteenth century cold-storaged for the
instruction of the nineteenth. Whosoever might wish to observe in
action the political and social ideas of Philip the Second needed but
to journey to the Philippines.
Almost nothing had changed there. In Europe ideas had dawned of a free
press, free speech, general education, the ballot-box, parliamentary
government, the rights of the individual, the immaculate nature of
justice, the determining of legal causes by unimpeachable processes,
the gradual eclipse of the monarchical conception of society, the
passing of the barony. Not one of these had come near the Philippines.
Government there was the autocracy of a privileged class, tempered
slightly by occasional revolutions, unlimited and unrestrained by any
other consideration, and carried on chiefly for personal
aggrandizement.
Instead of freedom of publication, the censor sat upon an impregnable
throne and scrutinized not merely every word to be printed in every
journal but every book that was imported, even in a traveler’s
hand-baggage. Instead of free speech, the natives might not even
petition of their grievances. Instead of general education, the masses
were of a purpose kept in ignorance. Instead of justice, they must lead
their lives without other protection than they could win by a feigned
humility beneath the arbitrary power of their rulers.
It was in such surroundings that this boy came into his consciousness.
He had a mind receptive and powerful. By no possibility could these
impressions fail to be reflected in his thinkings and then in his life.
Other youths the same environment drove into sullen apathy, racial
fatalism, or a life fed with always disappointed hopes of revenge. This
boy they drew along a path of strange adventures and almost
unprecedented achievement to a place among the great men of all times.
The roots of this story begin three centuries before the Mercado family
at Calamba was caught up in its heartbreaking intrigues. After what was
called the “discovery” of the Philippines by Magellan, March 16, 1521,
Spain laid claim to the entire Archipelago, more than two thousand
sizable Islands. [11] Portugal disputed this, neither having the
slightest just basis for its claim, until 1529, when the pope settled
the quarrel out of hand and gave the Philippines to Spain. In 1570 the
taking by a Spanish expedition of the capital city of Manila was
assumed to have put the physical seal upon this deed of gift, and Spain
proceeded to annex and to govern such of the Islands as she could by
persuasion or beating induce to accept her sovereignty. From the first
the tenancy was incongruous and precarious; Europe of the Middle Ages
laid upon a civilization more ancient, wholly alien, and traditionally
well rooted. What followed is a tangle of inconsistencies. On the
administrative side, Spain with musket-balls shot order and obedience
into the natives; from first to last the rulers had but the one broad
policy, which was to overawe the people they ruled and to subjugate
them with fear. On the cultural side the account was at first wholly
different. That they might give to these same natives the blessings of
Christianity and the gospel of peace, the heroic Spanish missionary
priests endured trials compared with which most martyrdoms seemed easy.
Thus in a naïve way, rather startling now to contemplate, perdition and
paradise were to be glimpsed side by side, brute force marched with an
apostolic love, and bullets were distributed with the Bible.
But, before the labors and good deeds of the missionary priests,
scoffing falls silent. The soldier slew and destroyed; the priest
planted schools, spread knowledge, bettered conditions. He did not even
wait for the soldier to break a way or to indicate security, but
plunged ahead of the armies into the wilderness where he knew he was
likely to leave his bones.
Whether when all is said the general balance-sheet of the Spanish
occupation shows more net advantages or disadvantages for the Filipino
can be argued plausibly either way. In such a welter of conflicting
testimonies the fair-minded will be slow to judge. We shall have to
deal again with the question when we come to see how in his mature
years José Rizal reacted to it and how his analyses disposed of the
commonest of the Spanish claims. Considering it here in its due
historic place, we may first remind ourselves that with all her faults
Spain had at least one great virtue. She pretended no altruism. On a
sordid impulse she took the Islands; she kept them merely as goods.
As to this debated point the findings of Dr. T. H. Pardo de Tavera seem
clear. [12]
“Those that are wont to depreciate civilization and material
development to the point of being inexact,” he says, “cite the voyage
of Magellan as an enterprise motived only by religious ideals and by
sincerest and purest charity. They misrepresent or forget two
incontestible facts. First, the voyage of Magellan was proposed to and
accepted by the King of Spain, was approved by his ministers and was
carried out by Magellan and his companions for the mercantile purpose
of discovering, by sailing westward, a route to the Moluccas and thus
wresting from the hands of Portugal the rich commerce that pertained to
those, the Spice Islands. This and nothing else was the origin,
inspiration and object of that famous expedition. Second, such a
purpose could be realized precisely because the Spaniards had achieved
a material development that inspired the enterprise and made it
possible.”
The more honor, then, to the Spaniards, who, having in view only the
purposes of a bargain, still added much to the equipment of the
Islanders. They erected better buildings than the Filipinos had ever
known, made better roads, introduced, with whatsoever cruelties, a
better coördination, something like uniform laws, something like a
welded and coherent polity; they discouraged piracy when it could no
longer serve to subdue the natives; they gave money for schools,
whether these were efficient or otherwise; they made some connection,
however frail, between the culture of the Islands and that formerly
existing in the rest of the world. Yet, aside from the labors of the
missionaries, the other boons that followed their red trail are
doubtful. Accepting these at the Spanish valuation, the fact still
seems to protrude that Spain found an industrious population and
managed to leave it indifferent and indolent, [13] found one style of
civilization and left another.
Prejudice and racial hatreds have obscured about this one other fact
that never should be overlooked. The Filipinos would not have stood
still if the Spaniards had left them alone. True estimate, therefore,
is to be made, not on a comparison between what they were when the
Spaniards came and what they were when the Spaniards left them, but on
what they probably would have made of themselves. They were no backward
race; they had shown a remarkable aptitude to absorb the best of the
progress around them, taking on arts, inventions, manufactures, and
developing them. They made and used gunpowder before it was known in
Europe; they made and used cannon of a considerable size, built better
sea-going ships than the Spaniards, had developed more skilful
artificers in silver and gold, and had evidently a disposition to
improve methods and manners. [14] In those three hundred years,
supposing them to have been left to their own devices, they would never
have ceased to look forward. Yet when the line comes to be drawn below
the items of their progress under Spanish control and we glance across
even to the most dilatory countries of Europe, we are compelled to
admit that relatively the advance is small.
But because the natives writhed under the crude and savage oppression
that walked with this, we are not to suppose the Spaniards they hated
were all bad men. Goodness and badness hardly enter into the matter.
There came to the Philippines in these 325 years many a
governor-general with a worthy inspiration to overturn the tables of
the money-changers and bring in righteousness and justice. It appears
that what was going on in the Philippines was not always ignored at
home, and many a private citizen of good character started out to
support a reforming governor-general. The significant fact is that all
these efforts had one end. Nothing was ever changed. The best of the
governor-generals fell impotent against the same menacing wall of
System. Securely it had been based upon favoring conditions; it had
grown under generations of greedy maladministration; it extended to
every part of the Archipelago where Spain had authority; and it was
buttressed by the power that in all times has proved the most difficult
foe to the freedom and progress of the masses. For such is the power of
accumulated profits to breed more power to make more profits and still
more power. Here was indeed the appetite that grows by what it feeds
on. The invisible government had swallowed the visible.
Nevertheless, for a long time, nothing is to be subtracted from the
work of the fathers of the church. A noble zeal animated them; often
they added to it a fine tact, much practical wisdom, unlimited capacity
for self-denial, and even self-immolation. Years went by; the
missionary era came to an end; there was no longer the splendor of the
apostolic adventure into the jungle. A different spirit began to
possess a part of the clergy; not all of it, but a part. Marvelously
rich the country was that Spain had annexed in this fashion; hardly
anywhere else had nature bestowed a more fertile soil with a more
pleasing climate. For two hundred years the Government at Madrid, with
an excess of stupidity, restrained the natural development of this Eden
by narrowly limiting its trade. Only to Mexico and only by means of one
galleon a year could the struggling colony export its products; a
process of strangulation into which some bugaboo of competition had
harried the merchants of Barcelona and so the poor foolish Government.
After 1815, as liberalism and the beneficent results of the French
Revolution began to make their belated appearance in Spain, these
restrictions were cautiously relaxed, and at once the value of
Philippine lands began to increase.
Four orders of European friars [15] had settled themselves in the
Philippines, obtaining in the early days from the insular Government
grants of estates that because of the lack of adequate surveying and
for other reasons were of shadowy boundaries. As trade increased it
multiplied the demand for Philippine products. Under this pressure,
forests once covering great areas of rich land were cleared away by
pioneers that settled upon the soil they had made tillable. In hundreds
of cases the friars laid claim to such lands and demanded of the
settlers possession or rents. If the settler resisted, the Civil Guard
or other military force ejected him. If he sought relief in the courts
he had only his heavy expenses for his pains.
Thus the monastic orders had become the System. Accumulated wealth had
wrought upon them the effects it ever achieves everywhere. Originally
they had come to the Philippines with a pure notion of doing good; now
they were caught in the soiled entanglements of gain. Through all the
sequel a gap widened between the four orders and the rest of the
church. Other clergy, notably the native priests, continued to serve,
according to their lights, the professed objects of religion; the four
orders were four great corporations, indurated with profits, playing
the callous landlord, extorting rents, harassing tenants, extending
their operations, and with every new peso of their hoards strengthening
their influence upon Malacañan, the seat of the administration. So
works the law that inevitably attends upon accretion. Gradually they
dispossessed the military, official, and merchant castes that at first
had been all in all. Such potency as in other countries belongs to
banks or great industrial companies lay now in their hands. Whatsoever
they wished, that, by one means or another, they won. It is not humanly
possible that under such conditions men should not deteriorate; the men
that sway so gross a rule, the men upon whom it is swayed.
It was so here. The friars of the orders became intolerable local
tyrants. In the rural regions, the word of the curate, if he was of the
dominant caste, outweighed the command of the provincial governor. As a
rule the governor-general himself dared not in any way oppose the
clerical domination; a few words lightly whispered at Madrid would be
enough to make sure his recall and ruin. One of these governors that
tried to assert his own authority had to fight a clerical mob in his
own palace, and fell dead, sword in hand, across the body of his son.
[16] The lesson did not need repetition; thenceforth the successors of
the Governor-General Bustamante of 1719 made haste to placate a power
so great and so malignant. Even the redoubtable Emiliano Weyler himself
was careful and obsequious to maintain good relations with the four
orders. Nay, he went to the length of supervising the ejection of
settlers from the lands the friars claimed, and in at least one
instance, as we shall see, accelerated the work with a battery of
artillery.
It is now reasonably certain that most of these claims were without
merit, but unlimited power had produced among the orders the effect it
has had in all ages and climes upon the men that have possessed it.
Over a certain genus of temperament the evil spell seems too great to
be abridged by religion or by anything else. Nothing in the so-called
civilizing adventures of Europe upon the fringes of the earth has been
more clearly proved than that the white man, removed from the
restraining influence of home and his neighbors and clothed with
irresponsible power over people whom he deems inferior, is capable of
reversion to an astonishing tyranny. The records of the Congo, of Dr.
Peters in South Africa, of the Germans in the South Seas, are easy
illustrations on a large scale of what happened here in little.
It has been the huge blunder of Europeans dealing with the Malay to
mistake his patience for weakness and his silence for acquiescence.
Aliens imposing themselves by force upon a remote people of another
color have seldom been at pains to pick up the keys to the psychology
of the governed. Great is the misery that would have been avoided for
the dark-skinned children of earth by the use of this simple process,
and nowhere was it simpler than in the Philippines.
All these influences and causes were at work to make trouble. Partly by
their own excesses, partly by becoming the symbols and visualized
representatives of the whole foreign domination, with all its
intolerable wrongs and oppressions, the friars were now the objects of
a deathless hatred. Hardly were the landlords of old more abhorred by
the Irish peasantry.
It was a people capable by nature of much hating as of much loving upon
whom fell this bitter inheritance. One can only suppose that the
average Spaniard in the Philippines stood sentinel against himself lest
he should understand the people he thought were under his boot-heel. In
point of fact, they were not stupid and inferior, as he always
described them, but of an excellent mentality, quick apprehension,
reasoning powers at least equal to his own, of a certain inheritance of
culture, different, cruder, but in its way not less. Particularly they
were a people in whom resentment against injustice might smolder long
but only in the end to blaze into perilous fires. Three centuries of
Spanish domination had not extirpated the Malayan instinct for liberty,
but, judging from the climax of all this, only intensified it. Spanish
officers watching with intent eyes for the least sign of revolt took
from these people every discoverable weapon, even to bolos (knives) of
blades longer than so many inches. The better organization, discipline,
equipment, and military skill that alone constituted Spanish supremacy
was for ever being paraded in the eyes of the Indios. At every turn
they were reminded in some way of their position, helpless, barehanded,
and kept from one another by enmities the Spaniards knew well how to
foster. In the face of all this sedulous care, behold in the story of
their possession of the Philippines a serial of insurrection! Between
1573 and 1872, thirty-one revolts had been serious enough to leave
enduring records in history. [17]
Going over these records now, no one can fail to see that the uprisings
were progressive; however lamely inaugurated, poorly armed,
fallaciously led, each was of an aspect more serious than its
predecessor. Any Spaniard with the least skill in reading human history
could have foretold the result. As education spread, as mankind
elsewhere struggled more and more into comparative liberty, as the
sense of injustice grew in the Filipino heart, the day would come when
these people, too, would be driven to unite for the one great
all-embracing, all-inspiring object of national freedom and national
existence, and they would win it.
To this the friars and the governing class of the Philippines were now
contributing by providing the immediate sting that seems always to be
needed when an old and deep-lying resentment is to be goaded into
outward and physical activities. The friars and the governing class
were palpable; their acts of oppression were daily before the people’s
observation; but what they stood for as the emblems of a general
condition was much more important than anything they did. Stories of
men with causes just and righteous that had been ruined at the friars’
dictation in the farcical courts; stories of men and women persecuted
as Mrs. Mercado had been persecuted; stories of men beaten to death,
men strangled and men shot, men deported and women wronged, were
brooded over in thousands of barrios. [18] They but completed the tale
of three hundred years of government with the iron fist.
CHAPTER II
SCHOOL-DAYS AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS
The boy that so early and by this savage tuition came to be initiated
into his people’s sorrows was then chiefly remarkable for a gentle,
tractable disposition and a liking for books and study. He had been
born at Calamba, June 19, 1861. In his earliest childhood he seemed
undersized and undervitalized; but when he was six years old there came
to his father’s house his uncle Manuel, a figure of health and a
resolute practitioner of open-air sports, who took José in hand and
with daily exercises and rigorous living built his body to normal
strength and agility. Filipinos have a natural aptitude for athletics;
he verified now the ancestral blood in his veins. He ran and jumped; he
took long walks; he learned to fence, to ride, and to like the sun and
the wind.
By all accounts he must have been a singularly attractive child, even
in a country where handsome children are common. His color was the fine
tint of his people, a light, clean, even brown; his face a delicate
oval, but the chin firm and rather long; the forehead nobly shaped, the
nose almost classical, the lips full but nothing sensual. His eyes had
a hardly discernible slant; when he was animated they flashed out of
black depths a kind of black fire; but when he was quiescent they
seemed gravely introspective. Long afterward his neighbors and
relatives, trying to recall his boyhood, and perhaps overstraining
memory, thought he seemed always much older than his years, a notion
that may have arisen from his unusual habits. He liked to read or be
read to; he liked at times to be alone; he liked to hear his elders
argue; he liked to go to church to see the people there; and he liked
to reason.
José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonzo Realonda was his full name, made
up in the Spanish fashion from both sides of his house, paternal as far
as the connecting “y,” and maternal the rest of the road. Philippine
names seem to the Anglo-Saxon mind a riddle that adds unnecessarily to
the burdens of life. This boy was to be known all his life as José
Rizal; his father had been and was always thereafter known as Francisco
Mercado, his mother as Doña Teodora Alonzo. Francisco, the father, and
all Francisco’s younger brothers in a family of twelve called
themselves Rizal as much as Mercado and the rest; none of his older
brothers used Rizal; all of his children bore it as their family name.
Yet family name it was never, according to western standards; for it
was added in 1849 by virtue of a proclamation of the governor-general
and by the whim of the man then head of the house. A strange difficulty
had arisen in the Philippines. The original Tagalog (or other native)
surnames being invincible against the Spanish tongue, Spanish names
were used as substitutes, but not, one might think, with sufficient
variety. Religious fervor overworked the popularity of some of these
until there arose an inextricable confusion: seventeen Antonio de la
Cruzes in one town, all unrelated; twelve Francisco de los Santoses in
a single street. This knot the wise old Governor-General Claveria [19]
cut with ready sword. He provided a list of Spanish names, apparently
copied in alphabetical order from the Madrid directory, and required
the head of each family to take one of these, add it at the rear or
front of whatever other names he was then carrying, and hand it down to
his children. [20] The father of Francisco Mercado met the spirit of
the decree but evaded its letter. He chose for his official name of
names Rizal, which was not on the governor-general’s list, but passed
muster. It is a corruption of the Spanish word ricial, and means a
green field or pasture; being here a poetic recognition, maybe, of the
blessed state of Mercado’s own rentals.
In the long and many syllabled cognomen, sounding like a verse of the
Æneid, with which José was baptized, is to be noticed the name
Realonda. This was from his mother’s family, where it also was an
innovation of the ingenious Claveria. Her family had long been known as
Alonzo. [21]
Those that like to go over the first records of great men in search of
phenomena foreshadowing something unusual in after-life will never be
disappointed here. José mastered his alphabet when he was three years
old, and before he was five could read in a Spanish version of the
Vulgate from which his mother had taught him at her knee. [22] In other
ways his debt to her was unusual; she turned his mind in his earliest
years toward good literature, in which she had a discerning taste,
being for her times and environment of rare learning and college bred
in Manila. [23] With other accomplishments she knew and loved good
poetry, could make it herself, and early taught José to make it. He
grew up thus with the advantage of a bilingual background. About him
the common speech was Tagalog; his mother made Spanish fairly familiar
to his ear.
Once she read to him a moral tale, “The Moth and the Candle,”
translating as she went along, and emphasizing the lesson. The moth had
been told by its mother to keep away from the flame, and now see what
happened. A cocoanut-oil lamp was burning on the table as she read;
winged insects were flying about and losing their lives in the blaze.
José became much more interested in them than in the salutary warnings
of his mother. He said afterward that he was not so much sorry for the
insects that lost their lives as fascinated by their fate.
The advice and warnings sounded feebly in my ears [he wrote]. What
I thought of most was the death of the heedless moth. But in the
depths of my heart I did not blame it. My mother’s care had not
quite the result she intended.
Years have passed since then. The child has become a man. He has
crossed the most famous rivers of other countries. He has studied
beside their broad streams. Steamships have carried him across seas
and oceans. He has climbed mountains much higher than the Makiling
of his native province, up to perpetual snow. He has received from
experience bitter lessons, much more bitter than that sweet
teaching which his mother gave him. Yet, in spite of all, the man
still keeps the heart of a child. He still thinks that light is the
most beautiful thing in creation, and that it is worth a man’s
sacrificing his life for. [24]
He had the soul of an artist, you may perceive, and the artist’s
irresistible yearning for expression. Before he was five years old, and
without tutelage or suggestion, he began to draw with pencil and to
model in clay and wax. It was form that most took his attention; to
model images of birds, butterflies, dogs, and men, to draw faces and to
outline designs. [25] For such studies his surroundings could hardly
have been better; as soon as his bent was shown father, mother, and
uncles gave him every encouragement; this is a race that upon any
manifestation of artistic promise looks with a kind of solemn joy.
Uncle José Alberto, his mother’s half-brother, had been a
school-teacher as well as a student abroad; Uncle Gregorio was a great
reader; the atmosphere of the house was friendly to study. After the
Philippine manner it was grave, decorous, reserved; for there is not on
earth, one may believe, a people by nature more serious-minded. The
family was happy to have the benignant friendship of Father Lopez, the
parish priest, a fair antithesis of the typical friar of those days and
a noble inheritor of the purest spirit of the first missions. Father
Lopez was beloved of all the children of the parish. They had sound
reason for their affection; there was no kinder or more useful man. The
friendship he maintained with José seemed more like a page out of
Charles Dickens than the barren realities of ordinary child life in the
Philippines, and the priest to have stepped from some new and Spanish
version of “Christmas Stories.” The boy was to learn by painful
experience how different from certain others of the cloth was the
gentle old curate of Calamba.
Years afterward, when he was entering upon man’s estate, he was induced
to write what he called the story of his boyhood. It proved to be a
juiceless sketch of a few pages covering many years. He was not enough
egotist to make a good autobiographer. He begins by saying he was born
a few days before the full of the moon. Then he adds:
I had some slight notions of the morning sun and of my parents.
That is as much as I can recall of my baby days.
The training I received from my earliest infancy is perhaps what
formed my habits, just as a cask keeps the odor of its first
contents. I recall clearly my first gloomy nights, passed on the
azotea [26] of our house. They seem as yesterday! They were nights
filled with the poetry of sadness and seem near now because at
present my days are so sad.
On moonlight nights, I took my supper on the azotea. My nurse, who
was very fond of me, used to threaten to leave me to a terrible but
imaginary being like the bogy of the Europeans if I did not eat.
He had nine sisters and one brother. Of his father he says that he was
a model parent. [27] “He gave us the education that was suitable to a
family neither rich nor poor. Through careful economy, he had been able
to build a stone house.”
At nightfall, my mother had us all say our prayers together. Then
we would go to the azotea, or to a window from which we could see
the moon. There my nurse would tell us stories. Sometimes sad and
sometimes gay, they were always oriental in their imagination. Dead
people, gold and plants on which diamonds grew were all mixed
together.
When I was four years of age, I lost my little sister, Concha, and
for the first time my tears fell because of love and sorrow. Till
then I had shed them only for my own faults. These my loving,
prudent mother well knew how to correct.
The environment would seem nevertheless to be more propitious for the
breeding of an agitator than of either a moralist or an artist. “Almost
every day in our town,” he says, “we saw the Guardia Civil lieutenant
caning or injuring some unarmed and inoffensive villager. The only
fault would be that while at a distance he had not taken off his hat
and made his bow. The alcalde did the same thing whenever he visited
us.”
We saw no restraint put upon brutality. Those whose duty it was to
look out for the public peace committed acts of violence and other
excesses. They were the real outlaws, and against such lawbreakers
our authorities were powerless.
His father looked carefully to the beginnings of José’s education.
There was daily drilling in all the elementary studies; an old man came
and lived in the house to teach the boy Latin.
When he was nine years old he was sent to the boys’ school at Biñan,
where his uncle José Alberto lived, and where he acquired knowledge in
the traditional manner and under a liberal application of the rod. Dr.
Justiniano Cruz, his teacher, seems to have had no modern illusions
about the sparing of this implement; to have it hang by the side of the
Bible and be more frequently used was his notion of thorough
instruction.
José wrote of his experiences there:
My brother left me after he had presented me to the schoolmaster,
who, it seemed, had been his own teacher. He was a tall, thin man,
with a long neck and a sharp nose. His body leaned slightly
forward. His shirt was of sinamay, [28] woven by the deft fingers
of Batangas women. He knew Latin and Spanish grammar by heart. And
his severity, I believe now, was too great. This is all I can
remember of him. His class-room was in his own house and only some
thirty meters away from my aunt’s house [where José was lodged].
When I entered the class-room for the first time, he said to me:
“You, do you speak Spanish?”
“A little, sir,” I answered.
“Do you know Latin?”
“A little, sir,” I again answered.
Because of these answers, the teacher’s son, who was the worst boy
in the class, began to make fun of me. He was some years my elder
and had an advantage in height, yet we had a tussle. Somehow or
other, I don’t know how, I got the better of him. I bent him down
over the class benches. Then I let him loose, having hurt only his
pride.
From this feat, the other boys thought he was a clever wrestler. One of
them challenged him. His pride had an early fall. The challenger threw
him and came near to break his head on the sidewalk.
I do not wish to take up the time with telling of the beatings I
got, nor shall I attempt to say how it hurt when I received the
first ruler-blow on my hand. I used to win in the competitions, for
no one happened to be better than I. Of these successes I made the
most. In spite of the reputation I had of being a good boy, rare
were the days in which my teacher did not call me up to receive
five or six blows on the hand.
There was near-by an aged painter. José used to haunt his studio and
learned much there about the secrets of pictorial art. He continues:
My manner of life was simple. I heard mass at four if there was a
service so early, or studied my lesson at that hour and went to
mass afterward. Then I went into the yard and looked for mabolos.
[29] Then came breakfast, which generally consisted of a plate of
rice and two dried sardines. There was class-work till ten o’clock,
and after luncheon a study period. In the afternoon there was
school from two o’clock until five. Next, there would be play with
my cousins for a while. Study and perhaps painting took up the
remainder of the afternoon. By and by came supper, one or two
plates of rice with a fish called ayungin. In the evening we had
prayers and then, if there was moonlight, a cousin and I would play
in the street with the others. Fortunately, I was never ill while
away from home. From time to time, I went to my own village. How
long the trip seemed going and how short coming back!
The tenderer plants of knowledge would hardly be expected to flower in
this harsh air, but the boy acquitted himself well. In two years he had
gathered into his little head all the wisdom Dr. Cruz could supply,
even with the conscientious use of the birch, and his parents had
decided to send him to Manila and the famous Ateneo Municipal of the
Jesuits. [30]
In Manila, though not at the Ateneo, he had been preceded by his elder
brother Paciano, long a student at the College of San José, where that
Father Burgos, whose death at the hands of the terrified governing
class in 1872 we have recounted, was an instructor. Paciano lived at
Father Burgos’s house and was his intimate friend. What ideas and
ideals dominated the Mercado household at Calamba we may surmise from
incidents of Paciano’s own school life. He was pilloried at San José as
a notorious patriot; because he spoke with some freedom against the
tyranny that blasted his country the authorities refused to allow him
to pass his examinations. [31] It appears that Father Burgos, although
unjustly accused of complicity in the Cavite affair, was likewise a
sturdy Filipino and convinced that the iniquities of the existing
System could not long be maintained. In all probability he was
sentenced for holding these views. No one will ever know this, because
the trial was in secret, no testimony (if any was taken) was afterward
to be found, and he that was called the witness for the Government was
garroted by that same Government before the public could learn the
nature of his inventions. [32] A belief that Father Burgos was a
general-principles victim is justified by the habitual proceedings of
the Government. He was not the only man that perished in those days for
what he thought and not for what he did.
The slayings of Fathers Gomez, Burgos, and Zamora took place a few
months before José Rizal went to Manila. Almost before Paciano’s face
his friend and teacher had been dragged to death. What communication
about these things Paciano made to his brother, or how Paciano was
moved by the tragedy, we can gather only from what happened afterward;
but what it meant to José we know well, for as to that he has left
eloquent testimony. Sixteen years afterward he compressed into
twenty-two lines of bitter irony the scorn he had of Spain for that
day’s work. The tragedy on Bagumbayan Field came at the time when his
mother’s persecution was beginning; his departure from home had been
delayed by her arrest. He was already burning under the sense of an
intolerable wrong; this sharp and gratuitous access of injustice must
have pierced him with another wound to brood over. [33] All the rest of
his life he seemed a lonely and rather melancholy figure. It was here
at the Ateneo that his aloofness began. A feeling grew upon him that he
was alone in the midst of crowds. It was the counterpart of a sense
equally developing in him that the misfortunes of his people were to be
the business of his life.
He found much at the Ateneo that sharpened his observations of the
source of the national disease. All things considered, the school
professed unusual virtues; its wise conductors made something of a
vaunt of equal treatment for all their pupils. Yet even so it was
impossible to shut out or to mitigate the contempt and hatred the
Spaniards had for the Filipinos. Before the faculty, Spanish boys and
Filipino boys might have an equal chance to pass their examinations;
outside of the class-rooms, the Spanish boys sedulously imitated the
arrogance and brutalities of their elders. One of the first remarks
made by José Rizal in his new academe was that the Spanish boys always
bore themselves with aggressive insolence toward their schoolmates of
darker skin; the “miserable Indio” attitude over again. The next was
that while the Filipino boys seemed as a rule to accept a situation
they were powerless to end, they were one and all insubmissive in their
hearts. Next he made note that the Filipino boys were so little
impressed with Spanish superiority that in secret they laughed at their
white tyrants, mocking them and well aware of their faults and
weaknesses. Finally, he satisfied himself many times in many ways, that
the Filipino mind was not in any respect inferior to the Spanish; for
the pretense of Spanish superiority there was no other basis but the
accident of the overawing military.
In cannon and not in mind, spirit, or genius lay all of Spain’s
prestige.
Before this discovery all the theory upon which Europe dominated any
part of the Orient crumbled and vanished. There was no such thing, it
did not exist, it was only fabrication and device. The brown man was
not inferior; he was not deliberately shaped by the Creator to be the
white man’s patient drudge. Put down side by side with an equal course
before them, footing the same starting-line, the brown boy in school
won to the goal as quickly and surely as the white. And only as quickly
and surely? It seemed to Rizal, after a time, taking careful note, that
the brown boy was in every trial heat the nimbler and wiser. [34] As,
for example, here was all the instruction in this school given in
Spanish, the white boy’s native tongue, but all alien to the brown boy.
So, then, the brown boy must needs compass the language in which the
instruction was conveyed as well as the instruction given therein. Yet,
even so, handicapped by this and no less by universal contempt and
disparagement, behold him winning at least as many prizes as the
Spaniard, at least as proficient, diligent, capable.
Here was a revelation to shake the towers of accepted doctrine. In the
light of it how great (and how hideous!) was the wrong done to the
people of the Philippines! The pretense upon which Spain ruled in this
iron fashion, with so much cruelty and dishonesty, was (in effect) that
in the cells of the brains and in the corpuscles of the blood of these
people some undefined and mysterious essence was lacking, and for want
of this they were incapable of ruling themselves or even of taking a
place among the other children of earth. Being put to the test, no such
lack appeared, but only aptitude, mental health, mental vigor, equal at
least to those of the white man. The European ruled, then, because he
had a larger share of the brute in him, because he had a sensual
ambition to rule, because his taste found pleasure in humiliating and
exploiting others, because he had a tougher conscience, and because
luck had been on his side. Of any essential, irradicable, structural
difference between race and race there was not an indication. What the
Asiatic really lacked was opportunity, not intellect; and liberty, not
character.
He came to these conclusions without haste, because his was a mind that
worked deliberately and over stretched-out periods of observation. He
has left a record of them: of the time when they caused him to believe
that the Malayan mind must really be better than the Caucasian; of his
final conviction that between mind and mind there is no racial
distinction with which reasoning men will bother themselves; that all
the children of mother earth under the same conditions will average
about the same results. In the end he came to discard the whole theory
of races; to his mind it was nothing but the manufacture of prejudice,
ignorance, or profit-mongering. Mankind he saw not separated by
perpendicular lines into races but by horizontal lines into strata.
[35] Everywhere some groups of men, favored by conditions, by liberty
first of all, by institutions, by opportunity, had climbed to higher
strata; everywhere other groups of men less fortunate as to conditions,
having less liberty, worse institutions, and narrower opportunity,
remained still in the lower strata. But everywhere it was, first of
all, conditions that determined whether men should climb or remain, and
not blood nor the color of skin nor the texture of hair.
It appears that he would make full allowance for individuals of unusual
gifts, for the Shakespeares and Hugos, Goethes and Voltaires. What he
was considering was men in the mass, not individuals. If we may judge
from his writings and the testimony of his friends he was singularly
free from vanity; certainly from the little vanities of self-seekers.
He could hardly have failed to perceive even then that he himself was
of the order of the exceptional; at the same time he saw plainly enough
that his own attainments were won by hard and systematic toil rather
than the rare blessings of the gods dropped into his lap. Still looking
upon men in the mass, he saw that to assign special qualities as
special inheritances out of the reach of other complexions was wrong in
science and foolish in practice. One race could not possibly inherit
the right to rule another; one race could not possibly be dearer than
another to the Omnipotence that he believed had created all.
Equality, then, was not a dream of enthusiasts, like those of France;
equality was the scientific fact. Liberty was not a rare chrism with
which were touched the lips of a few peoples set apart by their
complexions for this distinction; liberty was the indefeasible right of
all.
Manila, Philippine Islands, year 1876—this was. He found nothing in the
text-books put into his hands then that bred any of these ideas; above
all, there was nothing of the kind in the tuition he was receiving.
When he was a student at the Ateneo and later at the University of
Santo Tomas, the trend of thought there and elsewhere ran all the other
way. By his own mental processes he had worked out, when he was hardly
more than a boy, the theory to which gray-beard science was to come a
few years later. What he felt then the best schools teach now; a fact
that if there were nothing else would establish his precocity. But we
are to remember that he had formed early a habit of independent
thinking and had been stimulated to form it. This accounts for much.
Walls of convention that shut in upon and crushed the intellectual
machinery of so many other youths (there and elsewhere) had no terrors
for him; despite all weight of eminent authority he would at all times
and on all subjects think for himself. To be thus erect intellectually
in a university, even of these days and in these nations of ours
abreast with the front line of human advance, is still not so easy that
we fail to mark it if ever we find it. In his day, in his nation, then
intellectually dragged along at the moldering chariot-wheels of antique
formality, behold a marvel and no less.
This habitual attitude of mind was a great asset in his make-up—the
complete intellectual emancipation of the querist that will take
nothing for granted, but without bias or passion will investigate,
consider, weigh, seek, and decide. Being without feeling, it was
curiously counterpoised against another asset that was all feeling,
deep and real. His mind might climb into abstraction’s chilly heights;
his heart would be hot for Filipinas. He was an example of that
enlightened patriotism that has redeemed the word from its cheap and
reactionary definitions. It was no mere instinct of attachment to the
walls wherein he was born that moved him, the instinct that causes
goats to come home and cows to low when they are sold. He saw a people
of whom he was a member bowed under monstrous injustice, denied the
birthright of opportunity, slandered by oppressors, and contemned by a
world that took these slanderous inventions for a true coinage. In a
soul that worshiped justice and loved equity, he revolted against these
abominations, as it was certain he would have revolted against the same
wrongs practised against another people.
Not in the same degree; for at home the brand had been thrust deep into
him. He might not even have come, so far in advance of his time, upon
the modern theory of races if he had not started with a sense of
resentment against the suffering of his own. But when he had satisfied
himself of the truth of his theory, he naturally applied it to his own
people and felt more than ever the yoke that galled and hobbled them.
If the Filipino was not in fact made of different stuff from the marl
that made up the white man; if he was held in subjection not because he
was inferior in capacity but because he was shouldered out of his due
share of the world’s light and hope, again how much more terrible was
his plight! An aspiring soul, as fine and sure as any other, held as a
brother to the ox, Rizal began to perceive even in those early days
that the Filipinos were like a river that some great arbitrary force
had closed in and dammed back. He could see the water rising and hear
it struggling, and knew that some time it would break through the
barriers and run its due course. To his thinking, the real powers of
his people were latent, but of a kind the world would have to admit
when these powers should be set free. And what should set them free?
Education and political liberty.
It has become a habit among some writers and speakers to look upon
Rizal as a kind of superman, a creature of abnormal gifts, a brilliant
exception to the common endowment of the Filipino. Some have described
him as a bright, strange meteor flashing against a background of
Malayan incapacity. [36] As this narrative of a wonderful life unfolds
it will probably show that the man thus pedestaled was only human and
that the secret of his great works, enduring influence and pre-eminence
in so many walks was nothing mysterious but plainly understandable. He
had a twofold inspiration. First, he developed a habit of ceaseless
industry, carefully ordered, carefully followed. Second, and even
better than this, from his youth he had been overmastered, fired and
whirled along by a vision of his people redeemed. So then to their
redemption he consecrated his life. He did it in his closet, quietly,
without theatrics and without telling anybody. Macaulay’s theory that
every great man has something of the charlatan in him falls short in
this instance. For him the grand stand never existed. Whatever he did
was dedicated first in his heart to Filipinas; whatever he thought,
planned, dreamed, or hoped for had some reference to her and her
service, and now when he studied it was to fit himself to serve her
better.
We come back to him, knocking at the gate of Ateneo, eleven years old,
small for his age, and all a boy still; for we have shot far ahead of
that day to deal with the development of the ideas of which he was
slowly possessed. It was not with a head full of philosophy that he
made his application to the famous school, but, as he tells us in his
short notes on his life, a heart full of misgivings. The day was June
10, 1872, and he was to take his entrance examinations at the College
of San Juan de Letran, Manila. Christian doctrine, arithmetic, and
reading were the branches of human erudition required of youth that
sought to enter those doors. It is to be supposed that José could have
passed them with his eyes shut. He received the required mark and spent
the next few days at home. When he returned to Manila to begin his
studies at the Ateneo, “even then,” he says, “I felt that unhappiness
was in store for me.” [37]
For all his good passing-mark, he came near to miss the opening he
sought. Father Fernando, the Jesuit priest then in charge of the
Ateneo, looked upon him without favor. He had come late in the term,
for one thing; and then he was so small and slight. Only at the
intercession of Dr. Manuel Burgos, a nephew of the priest officially
murdered on Bagumbayan Field, the rules were relaxed and the midget
from Calamba allowed to come in. For the moment he forgot his
forebodings. With joy he put on the school uniform, the white coat
called an americana, the necktie, and the rest. When he found himself
in the chapel of the Jesuit fathers to hear mass, surrounded with
strange faces, a new boy in a new school, he prayed fervently. Then he
says he went to the class-room and appraised his teachers and
school-fellows, on whom he seems to have looked with preternaturally
keen eyes.
Father José Bech was a tall man, thin and somewhat stooping, but
quick in his movements. His face was ascetic, yet animated. The
eyes were small and sunken, the nose sharp and Grecian. His thin
lips curved downward. He was a little eccentric, at times being out
of humor and intolerant and at other times amusing himself by
playing like a child.
Some of my schoolmates were interesting enough to warrant
mentioning them by name. A boy, or rather a young man from my own
province, Florencio Gavino Oliva, was of exceptional talents but
only average application. The same was true of Moisés Santiago. He
was a mathematician and penman. Also it was true of Gonzalo
Manzano. The last named then held the position of Roman Emperor.
The title seems incongruous, but Rizal explains that to stimulate the
boys in Jesuit colleges the custom was to divide them into two
“empires,” one Roman, the other Carthaginian or Greek. These were
continually at war—academic. The battles fought were in the class-room,
over recitations. Points were scored by discovering errors in the work
of the hated foe. Rizal was placed at the bottom of the cohorts of one
of these “empires,” a private in the rear ranks. Within a month he was
emperor; he had outstripped everybody else.
Paciano was there that first day and took him in charge. He would not
allow the sensitive little artist to lodge in the Walled City or
ancient part of Manila, “which seemed very gloomy to me,” says Rizal, a
judgment others might echo. In another quarter of the town, twenty-five
minutes away, he was lodged with an old maid, who seemed to have a
superfluity of other lodgers and a scarcity of room to stow them in. “I
must not speak of my sufferings,” says José, with pious resignation.
[38]
The Ateneo was not an easy school in which to gain distinction or to
win favor; Rizal speedily achieved both. By the end of the first week
he was going up in his class. In a month he had captured his first
prize and seems to have looked upon it with rapture. At the end of the
first quarter he had won another prize and the grade of “excellent.” He
confesses that for the rest of that year he did not care to apply
himself. He had taken on a boyish resentment to something a teacher had
said, he explains. Possibly he was not yet inured to the prevailing
method of driving instruction into the heads of the young with the aid
of sarcasm and shouts. At the end of the year he says as if with a kind
of sigh, “I had only second place in all my subjects.” He received the
grade of “excellent” but no prizes, and the lack seems to have goaded
him to remorse.
It must have been efficacious, for when he returned to school he flung
himself with something like passion into the race for these laurels,
and it was said of him that no student there had ever equaled his
performance. The fathers began to look with wondering pride upon this
premier medal winner. For all that, he was a boy still and no mere
Johnny Dighard; he had fights and he read novels and he even found time
for social amenities, so called. At these latter he seems not to have
won distinction, though the records are meager; but at least it may be
said for him that he managed to fall in love. [39] One of the first
works of fiction he read was Dumas’s “Count of Monte Christo” in
Spanish. He says that it gave him “delight,” but it did more than that
for him. The wrongs and sufferings of Edmond Dantes bore in upon him
the misfortunes of his own people and sharply reminded him of his
mother and the two terrible years she had spent in Santa Cruz jail. In
Calamba and all about him festered a social system infinitely worse
than any Dumas had imagined.
About this time he began to lay out his days into a schedule of hours
to which he aimed rigidly to adhere; so many hours for study, so many
for reading; from four to five, exercise; five to six, something else.
This was a plan he followed, or tried to follow, all the rest of his
life, and accounts in part for that list of achievements that still
staggers the investigators. It was strict economy of time and likewise
an exercise in self-mastery, a virtue on which he set great store and
in the practice of which few men outside of monastery walls have
equaled him. He came to look upon his body as a kind of mechanism with
which, as its master, he could do as he pleased; feed it, starve it, or
run races with it. At the Ateneo he held it in subjection while he
accumulated medals, fought when necessary, and composed treatises in
chemistry, which, next to poetry and sculpture, had become his
pleasure.
CHAPTER III
FIRST CONTACTS WITH THE ENEMY
For the times and the place the Ateneo was a good school, by general
consent the best in the Islands, in some respects matching well with an
inferior preparatory school in America. When the Jesuits were allowed
to return to the country from which they had been banished, they
brought with them new ideas of education into a region where for two
hundred years such imports had been rare. For all that, education at
the Ateneo was not to be had except at the price of a struggle. There
was no suggestion there, at least, of Tennyson’s idea of a row of empty
pates and kindly Instruction tumbling in the sciences. A student like
Rizal, reputed in his second year to be the hardest working in the
institution, seemed like a soldier fighting in doubtful trenches;
education to be won, as it were, by hand-to-hand conflict. Years
afterward Rizal wrote in his own vivid style a description of the
manner in which wisdom was imparted in even the highest Philippine seat
of learning, from which wonder grows to amazement that there were in
those days any educated Filipinos. It reveals them again as of iron
will and unmatchable persistence. No such dogged resolution in chase of
knowledge is now required of any people; the pursuit of learning under
difficulties, it may well be called. A Filipino reading it now may be
excused if he is moved somewhat to hold up his head among the nations.
Every fact that one of his countrymen added to his store he must wrest
from the hard hands of prejudice and desperate chance.
As to this, the Ateneo was not so bad as the rest, but bad enough.
Within even its halls was as yet no emancipation from the notion that
the student is the scum of the earth and the professor sent to scourge
and chasten him. At Santo Tomas, whither Rizal was later transferred,
this variant of purgatory was at its worst; tuition dwelt in the Lower
Silurian. Rizal’s description is of the session of a class in physics.
The discerning reader will conclude that it is the transcript of a
personal experience:
The class-room was a spacious rectangular hall with large grated
windows that admitted an abundance of light and air. Along the two
sides extended three wide tiers of stone covered with wood, filled
with students arranged in alphabetical order. At the end opposite
the entrance, under a print of St. Thomas Aquinas, rose the
professor’s chair on a level platform with a little stairway on
each side. With the exception of a beautiful blackboard in a narra
[wood] frame, scarcely ever used, since there was still written on
it the viva that had appeared on the opening day, no furniture,
either useful or useless, was to be seen. The walls, painted white
and covered with glazed tiles, to prevent scratches, were entirely
bare, having neither a drawing nor a picture, nor even an outline
of any physical apparatus. The students had no need of any; no one
missed the practical instruction in an extremely experimental
science; for years and years it has been so taught, and the country
has not been upset but continues just as ever. Now and then some
little instrument descended from heaven and was exhibited to the
class from a distance, like the monstrance to the prostrate
worshipers—look, but touch not! From time to time when some
complacent professor appeared, one day in the year was set aside
for visiting the mysterious laboratory and gazing from without at
the puzzling apparatus arranged in glass cases. No one could
complain, for on that day there were to be seen quantities of brass
and glassware, tubes, disks, wheels, bells, and the like—the
exhibition did not get beyond that, and the country was not
upset....
This was the professor who that morning called the roll and
directed many of the students to recite the lesson from memory,
word for word. The phonographs got into operation, some well, some
ill, some stammering, and received their grades. He who recited
without an error earned a good mark, and he who made more than
three mistakes a bad mark.
A fat boy with a sleepy face and hair as stiff and hard as the
bristles of a brush yawned until he seemed about to dislocate his
jaws, and stretched himself with his arms extended as if he were in
his bed. The professor saw this and wished to startle him.
“Eh, there, sleepy-head! What’s this? Lazy, too; so it’s sure you
don’t know the lesson, ha?”
This question, instead of offending the class, amused them and many
laughed; it was a daily occurrence. But the sleeper did not laugh;
he arose and, with a bound, rubbed his eyes, and, as if a
steam-engine were turning the phonograph, began to recite:
“The name of mirror is applied to all polished surfaces intended to
produce by the reflection of light the images of the objects placed
before said surfaces. From the substance that forms these surfaces
they are divided into metallic mirrors and glass mirrors——”
“Stop, stop, stop!” interrupted the professor. “Heavens, what a
rattle! We were at the point where the mirrors are divided into
metallic and glass, eh? Now if I should present to you a block of
wood, a piece of kamagon for instance, well polished and varnished,
or a slab of black marble well burnished, or a square of jet, which
would reflect the images of objects placed before them, how would
you classify those mirrors?”
Whether he did not know what to answer or did not understand the
question, the student tried to get out of the difficulty by
demonstrating that he knew the lesson; so he rushed on like a
torrent:
“The first are composed of brass or an alloy of different metals,
and the second of a sheet of glass, with its two sides well
polished, one of which has an amalgam of tin adhering to it.”
“Tut, tut, tut! That’s not it! I say to you, ‘Dominus vobiscum,’
and you answer me with, ‘Requiescat in pace!’”
The worthy professor then repeated the question in the vernacular
of the markets, interspersed with cosas and abás at every moment.
The poor youth did not know how to get out of the quandary; he
doubted whether to include kamagon with the metals, or the marble
with the glasses, and leave the jet as a neutral substance, until
Juanito Pelaez maliciously prompted him:
“The mirror of kamagon among the wooden mirrors.”
The incautious youth repeated this aloud, and half the class was
convulsed with laughter.
“A good sample of wood you are yourself!” exclaimed the professor,
laughing in spite of himself. “Let’s see from what you would define
a mirror—from a substance per se, in quantum est superficies, or
from the substance upon which the surface rests, the raw material,
modified by the attribute ‘surface,’ since it is clear that,
surface being an accidental property of bodies, it cannot exist
without substance—what do you say?”
“I? Nothing!” the wretched boy was about to reply, for he did not
understand what it was all about, confused as he was by so many
surfaces and so many accidents that smote cruelly on his ears, but
a sense of shame restrained him. Filled with anguish and breaking
into a cold perspiration, he began to repeat between his teeth:
“The name of mirror is applied to all polished surfaces——”
“Ergo, per te, the mirror is the surface,” angled the professor.
“Well, then, clear up this difficulty. If the surface is the
mirror, it must be of no consequence to the ‘essence’ of the mirror
what may be found behind this surface, since what is behind it does
not affect the ‘essence’ that is before it, id est, the surface,
quae super faciem est, quia vocatur superficies, facies ea quae
supra videtur. Do you admit that or do you not admit it?”
The poor youth’s hair stood up straighter than ever, as though
acted upon by some magnetic force.
“Do you admit it or do you not admit it?”
“Anything! Whatever you wish, Padre,” was his thought, but he did
not dare to express it from fear of ridicule. That was a dilemma
indeed and he had never been in a worse one. He had a vague idea
that the most innocent thing could not be admitted to the friars
but that they, or rather their estates and curacies, would get out
of it all the results and advantages imaginable. So his good angel
prompted him to deny everything with all the energy of his soul and
refractoriness of his hair, and he was about to shout a proud nego,
for the reason that he who denies everything does not compromise
himself in anything, as a certain lawyer had once told him; but the
evil habits of disregarding the dictates of one’s own conscience,
of having little faith in legal folk, and of seeking aid from
others where one is sufficient unto himself were his undoing. His
companions, especially Juanito Pelaez, were making signs to him to
admit it, so he let himself be carried away by his evil destiny and
exclaimed, “Concedo, Padre,” in a voice as faltering as if he were
saying, “In manus tuas commendo spiritum meum.”
“Concedo antecedentem,” echoed the professor, smiling maliciously.
“Ergo, I can scratch the mercury off a looking-glass, put in its
place a piece of bibinka, and we shall still have a mirror, eh? Now
what shall we have?”...
Another pupil is questioned.
“What’s your name?” the professor asked him.
“Placido,” was the curt reply.
“Aha! Placido Penitente, although you look more like Placido the
Prompter—or the Prompted. But, Penitent, I’m going to impose some
penance on you for your promptings.”
Pleased with his play on words, he ordered the youth to recite the
lesson; and the latter, in the state of mind to which he was
reduced, made more than three mistakes. Shaking his head up and
down, the professor slowly opened the register and slowly scanned
it while he called off the names in a low voice.
“Palencia—Paloma—Panganiban—Pedraza—Pelado—Pelaez—Penitente, aha!
Placido Penitente, fifteen unexcused absences——”
Placido started up. “Fifteen absences, Padre?”
“Fifteen unexcused absences,” continued the professor, “so that you
only lack one to be dropped from the roll.”
“Fifteen absences, fifteen absences,” repeated Placido in
amazement. “I have never been absent more than four times, and,
with to-day, perhaps five.”
“Jesso, jesso, monseer,” [40] replied the professor, examining the
youth over his gold eye-glasses. “You confess that you have missed
five times, and God knows if you have missed oftener. Atqui, as I
rarely call the roll, every time I catch any one I put five marks
against him; ergo, how many are five times five? Have you forgotten
the multiplication-table? Five times five?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Correct, correct! Thus you have still got away with ten, because I
have caught you only three times. Huh, if I had caught you every
time—Now how many are three times five?”
“Fifteen.”
“Fifteen, right you are!” concluded the professor, closing the
register. “If you miss once more—out of doors with you, get out!
Ha, now a mark for the failure in the daily lesson.”
He again opened the register, sought out the name, and entered the
mark. “Come, only one mark,” he said, “since you hadn’t any
before.”
“But, Padre,” exclaimed Placido, restraining himself, “if your
Reverence puts a mark against me for failing in the lesson, your
Reverence owes it to me to erase the one for absence that you have
put against me for to-day.”
His Reverence made no answer. First, he slowly entered the mark,
then contemplated it with his head on one side—the mark must be
artistic—closed the register, and asked with great sarcasm, “Abá,
and why so, sir?”
“Because I can’t conceive, Padre, how one can be absent from the
class and at the same time recite the lesson in it. Your Reverence
is saying that to be is not to be.”
“Nakú, a metaphysician, but a rather premature one! So you can’t
conceive of it, eh? Sed patet experientia and contra experientiam
negantem, fusilibus est arguendum, do you understand? And can’t you
conceive with your philosophical head that one can be absent from
the class and not know the lesson at the same time? Is it a fact
that absence necessarily implies knowledge? What do you say to
that, philosophaster?”
This last epithet was the drop of water that made the full cup
overflow. Placido enjoyed among his friends the reputation of being
a philosopher, so he lost his patience, threw down his book, arose,
and faced the professor.
“Enough, Padre, enough! Your Reverence can put all the marks
against me that you wish, but you haven’t the right to insult me.
Your Reverence may stay with the class; I can’t stand any more.”
Without further farewell, he stalked away.
The class was astounded; such an assumption of dignity had scarcely
ever been seen, and who would have thought it of Placido Penitente?
The surprised professor bit his lips and shook his head
threateningly as he watched him depart. Then in a trembling voice
he began his preachment on the same old theme, delivered, however,
with more energy and more eloquence. It dealt with the growing
arrogance, the innate ingratitude, the presumption, the lack of
respect for superiors, the pride that the spirit of darkness
infused in the young, the lack of manners, the absence of courtesy,
and so on. From this he passed to coarse jest and sarcasm....
So he went on with his harangue until the bell rang and the class
was over. The 234 students, after reciting their prayers, went out
as ignorant as when they went in, but breathing more freely, as if
a great weight had been lifted from them. Each youth had lost
another hour of his life and with it a portion of his dignity and
self-respect, and in exchange there was an increase of discontent,
of aversion to study, of resentment in their heart. After all this
ask for knowledge, dignity, gratitude!
Just as the 234 spent their class hours, so the thousands of
students that preceded them have spent theirs, and, if matters do
not mend, so will those yet to come spend theirs, and be
brutalized, while wounded dignity and youthful enthusiasm will be
converted into hatred and sloth. [41]
Rizal liked the Ateneo and the Ateneo liked him, students as well as
fathers. His fellows seem to have had for him more of awe than
affection as they contemplated his always growing list of victories. We
may believe now that the distance that separated them from him was not
so great as they thought, the wizardry of his prize-winning being, next
to his hard work, the advantages of his definite aim. Most men that
acquire this and follow it with any steadiness, whether it be for
wealth, position, or reputation, seem to their contemporaries a kind of
demon, but if they live, indent the chronicles of their times. The idea
that seized upon Rizal and was always growing in his thoughts was that
he ought to do something to help his people out of the prison-house of
ignorance and tyranny in which they sat the bound captives of a
preposterous social organization. This was enough to mark him apart
from students that went to the Ateneo only because their parents told
them to go. Good things for him were things that helped him to his
purpose and bad things were things that got across his way.
Long after he had left those sequestered halls, he put together notes
on his recollections of his life at the Ateneo, that, curt as they are,
light up his views of himself, his peculiar self-abnegation and his
idea of his destiny. He says:
After the vacation, in that memorable year of my mother’s release,
I again had my lodgings in the Walled City.... My mother had not
wanted me to return to Manila, saying that I already had a
sufficient education. Did she have a presentiment of what was going
to happen to me? Can it be that a mother’s heart gives her double
vision?
My future profession was still unsettled. My father wanted me to
study metaphysics, so I enrolled in that course. But my interest
was so slight that I did not even buy a copy of the text-book. A
former schoolmate, who had finished his course three months before,
was my only intimate friend. He lived in the same street that I
lived in.
On Sundays and other holidays, this friend used to call for me and
we would spend the day at my great-aunt’s house in Trozo. My aunt
knew his father. When my youngest sister entered La Concordia
College, I used to visit her, too, on the holidays. Another friend
had a sister in the same school, so we could go together. I made a
pencil sketch of his sister from a photograph she lent me. On
December 8, the festival of La Concordia, some other students and I
went to the college. It was a fine day, and the building was gay
with decorations of banners, lanterns, and flowers.
Shortly after that I went home for the Christmas holidays. On the
same steamer was a Calamba girl that had been a pupil in Santa
Catalina College for nearly five years. Her father was with her. We
were well acquainted, but her schooling had made her bashful. She
kept her back to me while we talked. To help her pass the time, I
asked about her school and studies, but I got hardly more than
“yes” and “no” answers. She seemed to have almost, if not entirely,
forgotten her Tagalog. When I walked into our house in Calamba, my
mother at first did not recognize me. The sad cause was that she
had almost lost her sight. My sisters greeted me joyfully, and I
could read their welcome in their smiling faces. But my father, who
seemed to be the most pleased of all, said least....
There I tied the horse by the roadside and for a time watched the
water flowing through the irrigation ditch. Its swiftness reminded
me how rapidly my days were going by. I am now twenty years old and
have the satisfaction of remembering that in the crises of my life
I have not followed my own pleasure. I have always tried to live by
my principles and to do the heavy duties I have undertaken. [42]
The instructor at the Ateneo that Rizal chiefly liked was Father
Guerrico, a kindly, gentle, devout old man, full of learning and given
to good works. Long after swift and stirring events in the great world
had dimmed the memory of other faces at the Ateneo, the visage of
Father Guerrico, furrowed with thought, yet beaming with good will to
all mankind, was clear before Rizal, and with that marvelous gift of
his for sculpture he made, out of his lingering recollections, a bust
of the father, achieving a likeness of extraordinary quality, so subtly
charged it is with the feeling of truth that confers life upon
portraiture. But there is, indeed, no room to doubt his high artistic
calling; if to painting or to sculpture he had cared to devote himself,
he would have been one of the world figures of his day. When one so
gifted and having also the artist’s craving for expression and
achievement makes of these a sacrifice for the general welfare, it may
be doubted if rack or prison mean much more.
Sculpture came as easily to him as laughter to a child. From his
babyhood, or thereabouts, he had been modeling these figures in clay, a
spontaneous and irrepressible outgiving of the spirit in him; figures
strangely vital, and wittily touched, so that to-day the observer
coming upon them for the first time beholds them with a sense of
something weird, as if in some way he had come also upon the sculptor
behind his work. Often with no tool but a pocket-knife he worked in
wood to the same results. There are extant faces and busts he carved
thus in wood that have an almost inexplicable potency to suggest
character, thought, or life.
He had as great a command over his brush and pencil; his sketch-book
has a certain charm, distinctive and rare; he had the French artist’s
uncanny power to suggest with a single line an inevitable trait or an
overmastering feature of a landscape. He could paint before he had
taken a lesson. When he was a mere boy, still at Calamba, before he had
entered the Ateneo, a banner was spoiled that was to have been used in
one of the local festivals that were then so important; José painted in
its place a banner that all men declared to be better than the
original. [43] At the Ateneo he carved an image of the Virgin Mother
that won the unstinted praise of men not novices in art, and a statue
of Christ that for twenty years was one of the admired exhibits of the
school hall.
By all accounts, this multiplex being could write as easily; he was
poet and dramatist as well as sculptor and painter. At school he
continued to practise the art his mother had taught him, showing
himself a skilled practitioner in verse and a devout worshiper of
poetry, Spanish and Tagalog. For, despite the common European belief to
the contrary, Tagalog is not the dialect of a tribe of savages but a
highly developed language having an ancient and honorable literature.
There were poems in Tagalog as early as in English, and many a
beautiful Tagalog poem has been sung and resung and passed into the
heritage of the people where no European speech had ever been heard.
At the age when children usually begin to learn their alphabet this boy
was making verses. A little later he could see subjects not only for
poems but for plays. Before he was eight years old he had written a
drama that was performed at a local festival and brought him two pesos.
At the Ateneo, poetry and dramatic composition were his relaxation, his
pastime, his joy and rapture, when he turned from the ponderous routine
of the curriculum.
In December, 1875, he being then fifteen, he wrote “The Embarkation, a
Hymn in Honor of Magellan’s Fleet,” a poem in seven stanzas of eight
lines. The measure may be called anapestic dimeter, of which old
Skelton was a master and in which Herrick occasionally performed, but
rare thereafter in English poetry until Hood and Swinburne revived it.
A few months later he appeared with a poem of nine stanzas arranged
much after the manner of the Sicilian octave. This was on “Education”
and contained exquisite imagery, while it showed an unmistakable grasp
of melodic resource. [44]
In ranging among all books, old and new, that seemed to promise any
profit, he came upon one in these days at the Ateneo that helped
mightily to direct his career, while it freshened his young hopes to a
new bent concerning his people and what was to become of them. It was a
Spanish translation of “Travels in the Philippines,” [45] by Dr. F.
Jagor, the German naturalist. Something more than the flora and fauna
of these fascinating Islands concerned Dr. Jagor; like so many other
just and reflective visitors in those parts, he had been led to think
much about the remarkable characteristics of the inhabitants and the
singular misfortune that had befallen them. Unless all signs were
deceptive, this was a race endowed for a career and a place in the
world’s procession; of these it had been cheated by an outland
despotism whose sole foundation stood upon force. In all probability
this anomaly could not endure. Spain, still groping in the past, was no
possible cicerone for a race that felt springing within it the strong
man-child of nationality and progress. One thing, if none other, was at
hand to insure the doom of such absurdity. Dr. Jagor had traveled in
the United States and considered its profound influence upon other
nations. Its life and growth were daily proofs before him of the
eternal persistence of the democratic idea, and from that showing the
world could never turn away. He saw that the example of the United
States had spurred all South America to revolt and eventually to win
freedom; hence he concluded that the spread of this influence around
the Pacific was inevitable. [46]
In proportion as the navigation of the west coast of America
extends the influence of the American element over the South Sea
[wrote this prophet], the captivating, magic power that the great
republic exercises over the Spanish colonies will not fail to make
itself also felt in the Philippines. The Americans are evidently
destined to bring to a full development the germs originated by the
Spaniards. Conquerors of modern times, they pursue their road to
victory with the assistance of the pioneer’s ax and plow,
representing an age of peace and commercial prosperity in contrast
to that bygone and chivalrous age whose champions were upheld by
the cross and protected by the sword....
With regard to permanence, the Spanish system cannot for a moment
be compared with that of America. While each of the Spanish
colonies, in order to favor a privileged class by immediate gains,
exhausted still more the already enfeebled populace of the
metropolis by the withdrawal of the best of its ability, America,
on the contrary, has attracted to itself from all countries the
most energetic element, which, once on its soil and freed from all
fetters, restlessly progressing, has extended its power and
influence still farther and farther. The Philippines will escape
the action of the two great neighboring powers [the United States
and Great Britain] all the less for the fact that neither they [the
Philippines] nor their metropolis find their condition of a stable
and well-balanced nature.
These deliberated forecasts deeply impressed Rizal. They were written
about 1874. Looking back now, the applause Jagor deserves for his keen
vision is easy, but in 1874 or 1876 who hailed him as a prophet? If he
found a disciple outside of the grim walls of the Ateneo the fact
escaped record; but to Rizal the sequence seemed normal to his own
reflections. He had an instinctive faith in the latent capacity of his
people; now he noted that this cool-minded scientist came from judicial
analysis of these same people to share the same belief. The next step
was facile; he perceived the logical procession of Jagor’s reasonings
about the rising American influence. It must be so, then, that America
would prove to be light and leadership to the Far East, and from this
time he turned to the United States as an example and a well-spring of
hope. [47]
That same year came the celebration of the first one hundred years of
American independence, and the reports of it fell pat with his new
meditations. As a rule, the newspapers of Manila, inspired by the
Spanish habitude, had referred with phrases of contempt to the American
republic. The centennial festival seemed to modify or to beat through
their prejudices, for space was given to long and respectful reviews of
the progress and achievements of the United States, and with these an
outline of the desperate struggle by which it had won its independence.
Upon a mind like Rizal’s, enlisted for freedom, susceptible to all
things heroic and idealistic, the effect must have been galvanic. It
was a lesson of more than one angle. Here was a people that had been
under such an incubus of political medievalism as was strangling his
countrymen. A handful challenging the greatest power in the world, they
had achieved their emancipation, and he could not fail to note that the
disparity between the Philippines and Spain was hardly greater than
that between America and Great Britain in 1776.
In the next place, the heart of the system the Americans had thrown
over was the idea that the royal authority imposed upon them was of God
and resistance to it was an impiety God would surely punish. One
nation, according to this record, had not only resisted such authority
but cast it off and trampled upon it, and, behold, its reward was not
the curse but the apparent blessing of God in richest measure. He
studied the history of this nation, considered its work in the world,
and deemed the conclusions of Jagor to be sound and just.
But Jagor had supplied also a certain warning. “It seems to be
desirable for the natives [Filipinos] that the above-mentioned views
should not speedily become accomplished facts, because their education
and training hitherto have not been of a nature to prepare them
successfully to compete with either of the other two energetic,
creative, and progressive nations.” Nothing could be plainer; this was
the great work to which he should apply himself. His people must be
trained and educated for the freedom they were one day to have. They
must be educated first and then aroused. Therefore, whatever learning,
discipline, equipment of facts and knowledge, power and resources he
could gain were capital, energy, equipment laid by for their service.
Toward two sorts of men the world has never warmed while they lived;
toward a man of melancholy and a man with a fixed and serious purpose
other than material. Rizal was both of these in one. A school is a
microcosm of the world outside it. He was admired at the Ateneo but
went his way there essentially alone. He seems to have felt that this
must be so and accepted loneliness in the spirit of his philosophy and
as part of the task laid upon him. The natural complement of his
loneliness was an unusual capacity for friendship; the natural
complement of his melancholy was a keen sense of humor and a flashing
wit; for so do men seem to be made up and (except in novels and plays)
never of one piece.
Being real and breathing and not a lay figure of romance, Rizal was
like the rest of us, subject to gusts of this and that and a gamut of
moods; and yet, like other men of strong will, managed to steer fairly
straight for one landfall. When the fit was on him he was wont to draw
for his family vastly funny sketches, to write quips, to make jokes,
and even to fashion comic verses. His gift of portraiture, a singular
power to reproduce with convincing strokes any face he had ever noted,
ran over at the least provocation into rollicking burlesque. In later
times he would have been a priceless cartoonist; to illuminate any
thought that crossed his mind a humorous or grotesque or inspiring
picture fell easily from his pencil. It was from his brooding
introspection that he reacted to his excruciatingly funny caricatures,
and if he had not some such vent might have gone mad or (terrible
thought!) even have become a prig.
But from these adventures he came back to the sobering facts of his
mission as the business and only reality of life. To contribute
something to the helping and enlightening of these people was his
métier and the only thing really important. A many-sided man, as you
shall see. With all the laborious exactions of his time schedule, he
could still continue his worship of art and beauty; he kept on with his
modeling, kept on with his painting and poetry. His holidays he
sometimes spent with his mother at Calamba; and his habit was to go
home to her with a pocketful of verses of his recent making. That
excellent woman and judicious critic set herself to clarify and direct
the fire thus burning. [48] She must have succeeded after good models,
for Rizal freshened the laurels of his Ateneo triumphs by winning
prizes beyond its intellectual tiltyards. The Manila Lyceum of Art and
Literature founded a competition among Filipino poets, “naturales y
mestizos.” [49] Rizal won it with a poem entitled “To the Philippine
Youth.” [50] From a point of view that was never urged he had no right
to win it: the Lyceum was supposed to be for adults, and he was only
eighteen years old. But the subject had called forth the best that was
in him; it offered a chance to preach his favorite theme, to appeal to
his young countrymen, and to stir in them something of the passion that
moved him, while he suggested the Filipinas that might be. [51]
His achievement went beyond prize-winning. By a route that even he had
never imagined, it became a thing of history. In this poem he called
the Philippine Islands his “fatherland.” The Philippine youth were the
Bella esperanza de la Patria Mia! [52] Simple and natural as the
reference was, it started the easy typhoon to blowing. No such phrase
from such a source with such an application was tolerable. In his poem
on “Education,” Rizal had spoken of that sweet wisdom as illuminating
the “fatherland,” but this was naïvely taken to have a wholly different
meaning. To these people, in the litany of lip-service, at least, the
only fatherland they knew was the Spain they had never seen but of
which the image in their hearts was all somber and cruel. With
passionate adoration Rizal now spoke of another fatherland, of the
Filipinas of his birthplace; he dared to address it even as a Spaniard
might address Spain, “Vuela, Genio Grandioso!” “Come, thou great
genius!” Yet he knew it as a country that breathed the effluvium of an
unnatural existence—chained to a corpse. In irony he was dealing; a
terrible, sobering irony. Already he felt in his heart that the
existing state could not last; no proud, capable, normally minded
people with a historic background of their own would long endure it.
Echoes of the great wave that rolled around the rest of the world grew
every day in the ears of these Islanders. Discontent surged in their
hearts, and Rizal in his poem was the first voice and wise articulation
of their protest. [53]
In this, and as a piece of art, it was powerful and significant. He
addressed the young men of the Philippines as if they were like other
young men of the world, free, and able to put forth their powers, to
make their way; not inferior, not the fags and drudges of the hateful
Spanish tradition. Here was innovation—here was danger! In no such vein
were they accustomed to be addressed, and the neuremic espionage that
sustained the existing order seems to have been quick to notice the
novelty. He had been careful to declare with due emphasis his loyalty;
but in every autocracy the uneasy governing class learns first of all
to discount such professions. The poem added to the disfavor in which
the official world held him; his aloofness and studious habits seem to
have multiplied suspicion. A youth with such sentiments and such ways
must be thinking mischief; devilish plottings were irresistibly
suggested. So, then, the blacker the mark against his name! The press
of Manila, all censored, all edited in behalf of the rulers, seems to
have learned early of this proscription. In the stealthy way of the
journalistic prostitute it was already giving Rizal warning. [54]
There were other things in his habits not calculated to give
pleasurable sensations to sedulous supporters of things as they were.
From the beginning of his career at the Ateneo he had taken the
position that the Filipino boys were not to serve as door-mats and
punching-bags for their Spanish fellow-students. He had the courage to
insist upon this principle at whatever cost, which was often the
breaking of his own head. In all years and all conditions it is
character that determines; naturally he became the leader of the
Filipinos in all these encounters and led them without flinching. The
recluse came from his cell at the sound of battle; the student threw
aside schedule and book. He had grown at the Ateneo; he was no longer a
midget; and, having kept up his exercises with the rest of his regimen,
he could hit hard and take punishment. One side or the other was driven
off the field; he contrived to make the retreat a rout if victory sat
upon his banners. “Sir, you have wrestled well, and overthrown more
than your enemies.” One of these conflicts had, as you are presently to
learn, results that he had never counted upon; among them another
shadow on a life already troubled enough.
On March 23, 1876, he received the degree of bachelor of arts with the
highest honors from the Ateneo, and in April, 1877, [55] matriculated
at the ancient university of Santo Tomas. [56] Some of his studies he
continued to pursue at the Ateneo, which he always preferred. The
choice of a career still weighed upon him; in what way of life,
business or profession, could he fit best and furnish the most help? He
looked upon the fertile soil of the Islands, he looked upon the
medieval methods of cultivation in use there, and he half resolved to
be a scientific farmer and show the wonders of which the soil was
capable. He looked upon the general ignorance of the laws of health
among his people and in the end determined to be a physician, choosing
diseases of the eye to be his specialty. Oculists were almost unknown
in the islands, even poor ones; and diseases of the eye were
wide-spread there as in all tropical countries. Every year many
Filipinos went blind whose sight science might easily have saved. For
lack of competent treatment his own mother was likely to share this
dread calamity.
To the profession he had chosen he surrendered nothing of his addiction
to the arts; he modeled, painted, drew, and sang as before. Without
yielding to the extravagant eulogy that has attended his fame in recent
years, it appears certain that he was in art one of those rare
creatures that are endowed at once with two great faculties. He could
create and he could analyze; he could feel and he could reason; and on
either side his activities could be carried on with the same native
ease.
About the time he was entering Santo Tomas the Lyceum staged another
poetic tourney, this time to celebrate the glory of Cervantes. Rizal
was a competitor with an allegory called “The Council of the Gods,” in
which he developed a critical exposition of Cervantes and his art,
lucid, just, and competent; as remarkable a production as the
imaginative part of his work. The awarding of the prizes in this
competition resulted in a painful incident that took its place in the
chain of fateful things now drawing him away. Mystery surrounds the
facts and always will, but it appears that the competitors entered the
lists with assumed names, and that Rizal won the first prize; but when
he was discovered to be a Filipino the laurel was taken from him and
bestowed upon a Spaniard. [57] It was a slash in the old wound; not
even in that domain of art, supposed to have shut doors upon the
prejudices of nation and birth, was the Filipino to be allowed to
forget his inferiority. His fellows at the Ateneo felt that he had been
wronged, and knowledge of the general resentment took nothing from the
ill will with which he was viewed by the governing class. In all lands
it is the fate of the foreign colony to be swayed by puerile emotions;
among these in the Spanish colony of Manila suspicion led all the rest.
Meantime his fate was crying out to him in strange voices that led him,
before he was aware, into the road from the Philippines. At the Ateneo
the students were fond of enacting plays of their own devising. Rizal
was poet and dramatist; here was the plain call to his favorite
pursuit. He wrote for his fellows a metrical drama called “Beside the
Pasig,” and on December 8, 1880, it was publicly performed by one of
the student societies. Courage he had never lacked, the courage of a
mind too reasonable to be deluded by fear. He showed now what he had in
his heart. One of the characters in his drama was the devil himself.
Into the mouth of Sathanas he put (with a dazzling audacity) a sentence
denouncing Spain and her policy toward the Philippines.
There are single colorations of character that sometimes reveal and
illuminate the whole man. This was one of them. Disclosed here was a
certain precise, firm touch of workmanship as typical as was the pluck
demanded to say such a thing. The perfect barbing of the satirical
arrow no Philippine audience could miss; Spain so bad that the devil
himself condemned her! Nothing could be more poisonous. But among the
persons whose attention was enchained by the daring flight of fancy
were members of the Government’s secret service. To keep watch against
such young enthusiasts tempted to raillery upon the existing order was
a chief point in their varied and malign industry, and in this instance
the author of these burning thoughts was no stranger to them. Even if
the bold iconoclast had never shocked right-minded people by calling
the Philippines his fatherland, he must have been from the first an
object of suspicion to the souls that could find sedition in the
drooping of an eyebrow. Brother of Paciano Rizal, son of Francisco
Rizal Mercado, should aught but evil come of that stock? To these
ferrets, his outbreaks in verse must have been no more than the
fulfilment of prophecy.
Then, again, Rizal did not like Santo Tomas. He was galled to think
that its methods of instruction lagged behind those of the Ateneo,
which it should have led. He knew well enough that the cold frown of
hostility was turned upon him by the friar professors. Santo Tomas was
Dominican; the Ateneo was Jesuit. In Rizal’s case jealousy between the
two orders was added to the heavy handicap he must pay as a reputed
insurgent against the System. The Jesuits had sent forth this
prize-winning prodigy. Logically, then, the other orders were
constrained to sniff at him.
He had other encounters with the System that in so many and diverse
ways wearied his people. One night when he was visiting his mother at
Calamba he came, half blinded, out of the lighted house into the
darkness of the street and dimly perceived passing him the figure of a
man. Not knowing who or what it was, Rizal said nothing and made no
movement. With a snarl, the figure turned upon him, whipped out a
sword, and slashed him across the back. It was a Civil Guard—so called.
Rizal’s duty as a Filipino under the barbarous code of the times was to
make a salute whenever he might see one of these strutting persons.
Spaniards need not salute; only Filipinos. If he had known that this
was one of the precious police Rizal would have performed the important
ceremony and so fulfilled his obligation to king and country. As in the
dark the policeman looked like anybody else he thought it hard to be
wounded for not possessing the vision of a cat. The injury was painful
but not serious. When he recovered, he deemed it his duty to report to
the authorities what had occurred. Jeering indifference was all his
reward. An Indio had no rights that a Civil Guard was bound to respect,
and instead of complaining Rizal should be offering thanks that the
offended soldier had not taken his life.
All these experiences must have weighed together, but it was the
political aspect of his plight, no doubt, that decided him. He had set
out in life resolved to win the best education his times and his means
might allow; for himself and more, for his cause much greater than
himself. He now began to see that in his country, and even because of
his love for it, he would be debarred from the knowledge and training
he desired for its sake. Often the sage old counselors had told him to
look abroad for that training, not at home. Most Filipinos that had won
any eminence had first escaped from the evil environment of their
nativity. So long as he could he resisted these arguments. The lost
prize seems to have completed the business for him. He made up his mind
to get the rest of his education abroad.
To go was not so easy as to dream of going. He must have a passport,
and of all men in Manila he was the last to which the Government would
allow that or any other favor; the patriot poet, the singer of the
“fatherland,” the critic of Spain, suspected of sowing treason in the
minds of youths at best none too docile. Through the help of a cousin
and his own ingenuity, he evaded this difficulty and all others. The
cousin got a passport in another name. Paciano and an uncle supplied
funds; [58] a sister gave him a diamond ring to pawn. To outwit
official suspicion, José went to Calamba ostensibly to visit his
family, and really to wait until a vessel should be ready to sail. A
cryptic telegram gave him the warning. He slipped into Manila and after
midnight stole aboard his steamer. When day broke he was well on his
way to Singapore. [59]
CHAPTER IV
VOICES OF PROPHECY
What life meant for average millions in the Philippines, under what
chill shadows of the jail and visions of the firing-squad they must
draw breath, how shifty and blackguard was the Government imposed upon
them, we may glimpse from what happened as soon as Rizal’s absence was
discovered. Civil Guards and official eavesdroppers were busy at
Calamba; all members of the family were dogged, watched, waylaid, and
cross-questioned as if suspected of murder. They must do more than lie
to protect themselves. Paciano, the brother, who had been a confidant
in this desperate plot to take ship and go, was reduced to a kind of
play-acting, running about Rizal’s lodging and inquiring frantically
for his lost brother as if he conjectured suicide, assassination, or
kidnapping. All the Government seems to have been thrown into chill
alarm by the fact that one college student, not yet of age, had left
Manila without its permission. If there has been upon this earth a
tyranny that existed without the finger of fear upon it history,
surely, has no mention of it, and in the case of the Spanish tyranny in
the Philippines the vague and kindergarten terrors that assailed it had
long been notorious. To be afraid of a solitary student whose most
dangerous manifestation had been a taste for radical poetry may seem
fantastical to steadier pulses but was real enough to the anxious souls
that then steered Spain’s sovereignty through unquiet waters. In due
time the fact could no longer be concealed; gone he had indeed and in
very truth—gone, quite gone. Then, in characteristic fashion, the
Government proceeded to revenge itself upon the fugitive’s relatives.
It was again a case of a second cousin where the offender or his
brother was not available. In vengeance the taste of the Government was
never overnice. To make somebody suffer was its length and breadth, and
not too much haggling as to the identity of the victim.
Sketch-book in hand, the cause and occasion of all this uproar pursued
his way in peace, recording types among his fellow-passengers and
sopping up information like some form of sponge. From Singapore he
journeyed by French mail-boat through the Suez Canal to Marseilles, and
so to Barcelona. There he tarried some months and observed without
infection the extreme revolutionary movement that centered always in
that restless city. [60] Many Filipinos were in Barcelona; it was
passing strange to one late escaped from the gag-law and press-gang
conditions of the Philippines to a place under the same flag where men
could say and print what they thought. There were publications in
Barcelona that in the Philippines would have brought out the
executioner and added martyrs to the overcharged lists of Bagumbayan
Field. The Socratic mind of Rizal, with a question for every
phenomenon, could not fail to note this nor to find the cause of it.
Government loved freedom of speech no better in Barcelona than in
Manila. But in Barcelona the people were ready to fight for their
rights as they had fought for them more than once. In this fact lay all
the contrast.
At the University of Madrid, where he came soon after to anchor, he
elected to study medicine, literature, and philosophy, while outside
the university he took on art and modern languages. The burden of so
many studies was less than its appalling appearance, or less for Rizal.
With him, as with other good minds reared in a bilingual atmosphere,
languages were an easy acquisition. In his childhood he had spoken
Tagalog and Spanish; at school he had added Latin and Greek; after the
school of the pedant, to be sure, but still Latin and Greek. He now
assailed French, English, and Italian, all at the same time, and
without apparent difficulty. A little later, he mastered Catalan,
Arabic, German, Sanskrit, and Hebrew.
At Madrid it was with him as it had been at the Ateneo. In a few weeks
the university buzzed about this rare young Filipino that could do so
many things brilliantly and lived so much like a Trappist monk. His
fellows remarked of him that he had at its best the fine, gracious
courtesy characteristic of his people but was no great addition to the
university’s social assets. If the cafés, clubs, and other places the
students thronged knew little of him, he had two good reasons for
keeping to himself and living modestly. His excursion in higher
education was financed on slender terms by his father and his brother,
and he had work in hand that took all his attention; he must be at all
times about his country’s business. To a certain extent when he walked
apart he was doing violence to his own nature. By temperament he was no
horseman for black care to ride behind. He was frank, cordial, quick,
rather sanguine, and appreciative of good company and of conversation
with good minds. When he had the luck to fall in with these and
loosened the rein upon himself, or when he was with his own circle and
forgot the great thing he lived for, he made the common air sparkle
with shrewd, witty comment. [61] His studies in so many languages had
given him an unusual vocabulary; his talk flowed on without a break.
His own circle was a group of about a score of Filipino students, and
(strange to say) one Englishman and one German, that somehow found
themselves to be congenial and elected to meet at one remote café.
There they read the newspapers (London), played dominoes and chess, and
talked about serious things. It was the opinion of these young men that
Rizal came too seldom to their meetings, but whenever he consented to
be of the company he was its intellectual electric battery. He liked to
play chess and played it well; he liked better to discuss and to learn.
One afternoon he came in and announced that he was going away. He sat
by the side of the table and drew with his pencil on its bare top a
merry caricature of every person present. Then he bade them good-bye
and disappeared, and a waiter came with a cloth dipped in kerosene and
erased the drawings. The place did not see him again. [62] A few years
later, the price of those caricatures the waiter so easily expunged
would have equaled the value of the café.
He carried to Madrid his favorite notion of life led by time-tables;
and, dividing his day into segments, set apart one for general reading.
In this his choice was liberal; anything that would be likely to assist
his purpose was welcome. French classics, Shakespeare, Goethe, to help
his lingual studies; books on modern political questions; history above
everything, any history; biography by way of illustration; and the
theater (which he attended as often as his purse would allow) for
readjustment.
A book that early captivated him was a volume of the lives of the
Presidents of the United States, printed in Spain and in Spanish. [63]
It seems to have made a deep impression upon him; he all but wore it
out with frequent thumbings, and procured another edition with later
biographies that he carried with him wherever he went. These stories of
so many picturesque careers to eminence must have had an apt relation
to Jagor’s prophecy, a thing he never forgot. The application was too
obvious to escape such a mind. In a democracy, men born into the utmost
poverty, men born in log huts, the sons of peasants, the sons of
artisans, made their way to the highest positions, and not a soul cast
their birth at them. It was so; here were the recorded proofs. Under
the old monarchical system of society they would have found every door
shut in their faces and a thousand chains of caste to hold them in the
pit where they had been born. In a democracy every door stood open and
nothing impeded their ascent. Why does anybody write fiction when fact
is so much more dramatic and wonderful? In a student’s cell in a back
corner of Madrid was then being forged the wedge of brass that was to
overthrow moldering antiquity in all the Pacific and all the Far East,
and was so far hidden from the wise and prudent of earth they would
have laughed at the mere suggestion of it. Yet there it was, day and
night—forging. Well could Prophet Jagor see what was to happen but not
the manner of it. He knew that in the end it was the United States that
would remake the Philippines, even if at the time he wrote the American
people in general were so little acquainted with this part of the sun’s
dominions that to many of them Filipino suggested only something to
eat; even if he never dreamed that the instrument Fate would use in
strange ways to bring all this to pass was in the hand of a slim brown
youth naturally addicted to poetry and mooning.
While he was yet in the university, Rizal came into contact with
another influence that affected both his career and the story of his
country. He became a freemason. Upon all secret societies, but
especially upon the freemasons, the governing class in the Philippines
had scowled implacably; the friars and the church generally being still
more hostile. The governing class in its jumpy way believed that any
kind of secret organization must signify treason; the Civil Guards
objected because here were keyholes at which one could not watch; the
friars thought freemasonry threatened the economic welfare of the
church. By these, Rizal’s religious convictions were gravely doubted,
but need not have been since they were easily ascertained. He was of a
broad and sweet faith and a charitable practice, cherishing a universal
tolerance refreshing to encounter, but he was in the substance of his
belief a loyal Catholic. In his father’s house he had been accustomed
to hear religious questions discussed without the least restraint; [64]
within those walls Francisco Mercado would have freedom of speech if it
existed nowhere else in Filipinas. From such discussions he had learned
that religion was a matter about which men would differ widely and yet
without just reproach; the independent, courageous, and conscientious
man would decide for himself. When he came to understand the
subjugation of his country and the part played in that great wrong by
the monastic orders his faith in the organized church as the custodian
of men’s minds and thinkings faded out, but not his faith in the
essentials of the Christian religion, from which he seems never to have
wandered.
At the suggestion that freemasonry was or could be a foe to religion he
scoffed. Not only did he accept masonry for himself but he resolved
that upon his return to the Philippines he would further it among his
countrymen. He may have loved it for the enemies it had made; he would
have been scarcely human if he had not felt some such impulse. But
beyond all such considerations he must have found in the ritual
something of beauty and in the associations something of the calm and
fortitude for which the sorely tried soul yearned within him. We are to
remember here again that he was one carried by fate and the stress of
conditions out of his inclinings. He had the soul of an artist; by
sheer force of will he put himself down into an arena of strife. He
loved the cloister, books, and meditation; he forced himself to battle
with primitive men for primitive rights. He was a poet, with an ear
peculiarly sensitive to sweet sounds, a soul on fire about beauty and
its recompenses; and he turned his back upon all these because he
thought he heard a call to duty. Some men give their lives to a great
cause; some men give still more.
To reinforce the pittance his uncle was able to send him he earned
money by tutoring, though to work one’s way through a university was
not so easy nor so common at Madrid as we know it in America. He seems
to have been a fairly human kind of instructor. According to a letter
from one of his class in German he showed an exceedingly human
impatience when his pupils failed to grasp his ideas as rapidly as he
uttered them. [65]
Throughout all his studies he performed better in languages, history,
and belles lettres than in medicine; conclusive proof that he had not
followed his own desires but made a sacrifice of them when he chose
this profession. We have here his school ratings from 1878 in Manila
until the time he left Madrid University; they offer material for an
interesting mental clinic if one cares to undertake the exercise:
SCHOLASTIC RECORDS OF JOSÉ RIZAL
Studies in Medicine
In Manila: First Year (1878–79)
Physics—Fair
Chemistry—Excellent
Natural history—Fair
Anatomy No. 1—Good
Dissection No. 1—Good
Second Year (1879–80)
Anatomy No. 2—Good
Dissection No. 2—Good
Physiology—Good
Private hygiene—Good
Public hygiene—Good
Third Year (1880–81)
Pathology, general—Fair
Therapeutics—Excellent
Operation (surgery)—Good
Fourth Year (1881–82)
Pathology, medical—Very good
Pathology, surgical—Very good
Obstetrics—Very good
In Madrid, Spain: Fifth Year (1882–83)
Medical clinics No. 1—Good
Surgical clinics No. 1—Good
Obstetrical clinics—Fair
Legal medicine or medical law—Excellent
Sixth Year (1883–84)
Medical clinics No. 2—Good
Surgical clinics No. 2—Very good
He became licentiate in medicine on June 21, 1884, with the
rating “fair” (aprobado) (degree granted June 1, 1887).
He obtained the doctor’s degree (1884–85):
History of the medical science—Fair
Chemical analysis—Good
Histology, normal—Excellent
Studies in Philosophy and Letters
In Manila, March 14, 1877, he obtained the bachelor’s degree with
the rating “excellent”
In Madrid, 1882–83:
Universal history—Very good
General literature—Excellent
1883–84
Universal history No. 2—Excellent
Greek and Latin literature—Excellent with a prize
Greek No. 1—Excellent with a prize
1884–85
Spanish literature—Excellent with free scholarship
Arabic language—Excellent with free scholarship
Greek No. 2—Excellent
History of Spain—Good
Hebrew—Excellent
Cosmology, metaphysics, theodicy, and history of philosophy were
studied by him in Manila and finished in July, 1877, and March,
1878, with rating “excellent”
Licentiate in philosophy and letters, June 19, 1885, “excellent.”
Three years elapsed between the bestowing of his licentiate in medicine
and the taking of his degree. The lapse was never explained by Rizal,
but the reason was his poverty. His father was now in much distress,
and Rizal to prosecute his studies must live with narrow scrimping and
sometimes on crusts. He could not afford to pay the fee for his
doctor’s degree and went without it until his fortunes mended.
But his record of triumphs in philosophy and letters must have balanced
all possible regrets for the lack of this laurel while it added to his
great fame in the student world. So many scholarships, honors,
mentions, “excellents”!—these were the prizes he had won with so much
industry. The plan of his career he had now worked out to his
satisfaction: he was to visit the foremost countries of Europe, study
their institutions, learn the secrets of their progress, and carry home
to his countrymen information that might spur them to cast off their
lethargy and emerge from the national eclipse. Meantime, he was to
perfect himself in his profession that he might add to his usefulness
and take up his work among them. From Madrid, therefore, he went to
Paris, where he became clinical assistant to Dr. L. de Weckert, one of
the most famous oculists of Europe. [66]
It was in Paris that he took the first direct steps to his own ruin.
While still in Madrid he had come upon the idea of addressing his
countrymen through the medium of a novel. He had been reading and
studying Mrs. Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and he pondered with awe the
far-reaching effect upon history and human progress of that inspired
work. The thought occurred to him that similarly wrought pictures of
the servitude of the Filipinos might awaken them to a knowledge of the
yoke that was slowly crushing them, pictures that might at the same
time reveal to the world the justice of the Filipino cause. He went so
far as to suggest such a work to the Filipino club at Madrid, the story
to be of joint authorship; for he seems to have had doubts of his own
ability. When his fellow-members failed to see how great were the
opportunities involved he was driven back upon himself, as he so often
had been and was to be. From Madrid to Paris the idea grew upon him. At
Paris he took his pen and started seriously upon the composition of a
story of Philippine life.
This was the beginning of “Noli Me Tangere,” the greatest work in
Philippine literature and one of the great achievements of all times
and all lands. He was not perfectly equipped to be a novelist, for he
had not the great dramatic fictional sense that sees a moving tale in
the large and coördinates to the catastrophe every incident as the plot
unfolds; but he had assets many dramatic fictionists never possess. He
had the compelling fire of a lofty indignation, the sense of a great
cause, the faultless knowledge of the hearts and minds and sorrows of
the people of his little stage. He had something else that put him in a
class with Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, and William Dean Howells.
He was a great reporter. Nature had gifted him with a marvelous power
of observation; as truly as with his pencil he made those startling and
hardly surpassed sketches of men and things, so accurately his mind
seized and stored the significance of incidents, conversations, petty
broils, clashing ambitions, village tyrants, unsung Hampdens, and
cities of men and manners.
He wrote in Paris the opening chapters of “Noli Me Tangere” and carried
them to Heidelberg, where the next year he was a student at the
university. [67]
By this time he had begun to attract the attention of scientists for
zealot-like devotion to his scientific research. At Madrid, Paris,
Heidelberg, he was first the student and then the close friend and
coadjutor of the foremost oculists of that time. It appears that upon
his capacity and powers of concentration, which were extraordinary,
they founded large hopes of a brilliant professional career. Despite
his preoccupation and his aloofness, it is equally apparent that he
exercised upon them the charm of a singularly magnetic manner. Readily
he made friends; as easily he kept them. To the end of his life some of
the greatest scientists in Europe, men like Virchow, Jagor,
Blumentritt, and de Weckert held him in affectionate esteem and
delighted to correspond with him.
They had sound human reasons for liking him. In addition to so liberal
a store of other good gifts, this man was a master of the now rare art
of letter-writing. To the family at home he sent the most charming
epistles, full of shrewd observations, colorful descriptions, and a
cheerful wit. Often they were illustrated with his incomparable
thumb-nail drawings and humorous designs, and sometimes when he wrote
to his mother he sent her the latest poems on which he had been
engrossed. [68]
From Heidelberg he went to Leipzig and its university, studying, in
especial, psychology; thence to Berlin, where he took cheap lodgings
and settled himself to complete his novel while he should still pursue
his studies; for besides his specialties he had lately taken on
anthropology and entomology.
His association with Virchow enlarged and enlightened his views
concerning democracy and overcame much of the grave disadvantages of
his birth. Men born under a monarchy have always this to overcome if
they are to become effective soldiers of the Common Good. Virchow was a
philosophical democrat that had seen, as in a long perspective, the
ascent of man and had drawn thence an unshakable faith. Although Rizal
was now more than ever a democrat, on calmly reviewing the state of his
countrymen he believed that for his day the national independence of
the Philippines was out of the question. Memories of the popular
ignorance oppressed him. To be free, he thought, a people must know how
to use freedom. It seems not to have occurred to him that there was no
school but one in which that precious wisdom could be taught, and in it
were and could be no text-books. For, whatever scholiasts may imagine
and Utopians dream, it is experience and experience alone that tutors
man in the good use of his freedom. The theory that a nation must wait
until all its men have university degrees before it can be trusted with
its destinies is either the dishonest handmaid of exploitation or, as
in Rizal’s case, the footless product of the cloisters. Man, endowed
with freedom, will use it wrongly and use it rightly; and which is the
right way and which the wrong he will not know until responsibility
enlightens him. After all, it is not wholly strange that even so
excellent a mind as Rizal’s should have gone astray on this point; for
he was codisciple of the schoolmen, and in his day schoolmen taught
only his error. We need not on this account lower any estimate of his
worth and genius. He could see that if in his day and with their
antecedents the people of the Philippines should suddenly arrive at
their independence they would probably make for a time but erratic use
of it. What he could not see was that at its worst their condition then
would be better than the blight and curse of their previous state, and
that under the tuition of experience they would work out their problems
and vindicate their capacity.
But we have to deal here with the unfolding of this marvelous man and
the heritage of his deeds and thought. He meditated long upon the
unfortunate state of his people; he saw them bogged in ignorance and
blinded by superstition, and hence he concluded that until there should
be popular education, independence would mean only failure and
temporary reversion. Of the eventual freedom of the Philippines, as of
their eventual greatness and glory among men, he had never a doubt.
Meantime, the first work in hand was to arouse these people to the need
of education and to wrest from Spain by peaceful means some practical
relief from the savage tyranny that weighed down their hearts, darkened
their lives, and of purpose kept them in ignorance.
With all his other occupations he found time to press the work on his
great book, until he had completed in it an exposition of the full body
of his faith. Perhaps in the way of construction it is not so much a
novel as a series of vivid pictures of life in the Philippines of that
time; but with a strangely vivifying necromancy difficult to analyze or
define, the power of these pictures is hardly excelled in modern
literature. [69] We may believe that the secret of this compelling
power is the intensity of Rizal’s feeling; it gives to his portraitures
a sincerity and virility no striving and no art could come by. He
obeyed, unconsciously, the Sidneyan injunction about the heart and the
writing; some of the passages seem to be done in his blood and some in
his tears. The test of their might is easily made. Take to-day a reader
that has never been in the Philippines and knows nothing of the
peculiar life there; when he has read “Noli Me Tangere” he will not
only feel that he knows that life but it will be to him as if he had
seen it, as if he had heard these characters talking, noted their
visages, and discerned their motives no less than their acts. All this
he will feel in spite of the insulating septum of translation, against
which all the finer beauties of the style must fall dead; the terse,
vigorous, often biting sentences through which this tortured heart
uttered its protest, and even the almost magical charm of the
descriptions of the Philippine environment.
To be thus vivid and convincing about any phase of life is not easy; to
make intimate to the European a life in the world’s remotest outskirts,
of whose terms the European has no conception, in which he has no
natural interest, whose actors are of a different race, color, and
psychology from his own, is a feat bristling with difficulties. Some
critics, piqued, maybe, that a Malay at his first attempt should have
triumphed in a form of art deemed the exclusive heritage of the white
man, have objected that Rizal’s work has no great connected moving
story, such as Dickens or Ohnet would have dealt in. Suppose this to be
true, it is but a narrow view of fictional art. The mirror fiction
holds up to nature may be of many shapes, and the life chosen for
mirroring may be of many phases. All that the world can insist upon is
that they shall be representative and perfectly shown, and for these
Rizal had a facility like that of Cervantes. [70]
The theme is the gross, fat-witted tyranny that had enchained the
Filipinos and the extent to which they themselves were to blame for it.
Neither oppressor nor the complaisant among the oppressed was spared in
those cadent pictures; here each might behold his ugly countenance
faultlessly drawn. With bitter reproach he showed to his countrymen
their ignorance, their sloth, their tame submission that invited more
wrongs. In all human experience one observation has been invariable. It
is that the force that rules with autocratic and irresponsible sway is
able to bear anything else better than ridicule. The ridicule that
Rizal poured upon the dominant powers in the Philippines would have
stung to the quick Caracalla himself. One by one he marches them across
the stage, the whip of his terrible sarcasm always on their shoulders.
It is an immortal procession: the scheming, arrogant, lawless, immoral
friar, drunk with power and greed; the Spanish government officer, all
brute to the native, all crawling sycophant before the powerful orders;
the arrogant Spanish émigré, stuffed with the ridiculous bombast of a
bygone century, the émigré that has become rich in the islands at the
expense of the native and now hates and despises the rounds of the
ladder by which he did ascend; the native that cringes before the feet
of the classes that have so unspeakably wronged him; the woman of
Spain’s Island colony, “more deadly than the male”; the pretentious and
all but worthless educational system; the raw excesses of the courts;
the wanton cruelties of a Government conducted by expatriated savages;
the tortures and pathetic helplessness of the native masses. On all
this the man worked like Hogarth; he will startle and frighten you, but
he will convince you on every page that this is the truth. In this
misery, exactly this, dwelt the unfortunate millions that Spain
misgoverned; in this terror, thus trampled upon, overawed, silenced,
but not subdued. These were the people’s oppressors, lustful, cruel,
rapacious, their burning eyes following every pretty woman or girl,
their pockets lined with the peasants’ money, their claws reaching for
more. All the scenes of the drama and all the players in it, drawn with
irresistible art: the Civil Guards, the coarse instruments of this
despotism; the means by which terror was capitalized; the constant
temptation to revolt; the devilish work of the agents provocateurs; the
sickening punishments devised for those that yielded to the wiles of
such agents. [71] Against this shone the native grace and charm of the
Filipino woman, justly illumined, her goodness, kindness, ready and
apprehensive mind, the pitfalls dug for her by the bestial oppressors
of her people. You will say that all the materials are here for one of
those great dramas of human life that reach down to the primeval base
of first causes and of such framing this book has been made.
Everywhere is dense ignorance. The world that three hundred years
before left all these conditions behind still goes rolling in advance,
and hardly a Filipino knows of its passing. A great population endowed
with the potentialities of free minds, free limbs, free souls, free
ideas, is submitting to a yoke pressed down into men’s very flesh by
superstition on one side and brute force on the other.
We know that many of the incidents were but transcripts of what Rizal
himself had seen and known; many of the characters transferred
themselves from Calamba to his pages. Even when we read them for the
first time, and have, maybe, no previous knowledge of the locale, this
conviction of truth and sincerity possesses us; how much more it must
have reached and stung those whose enormities it paints! “It is only
the truth that hurts.”
CHAPTER V
“NOLI ME TANGERE”
The story is of a young Filipino, Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra, whose father
had wealth, was respected by the Spaniards, and wielded much influence
among his own people. Juan, still in his boyhood, is sent to a school
in Europe, that his education may be of the best. All prosperous
Filipinos hoped to send their sons, if they had any, on this quest for
the classical golden fleece. While Juan is gone his father becomes
involved in a dispute with the local friar magnate, the virtual
dictator of all the region about, as always; but this man brutal,
arrogant, revengeful, and lawless beyond the average of his peers. The
quarrel is about land; most quarrels with the friars had to do with
land or rents or fees or graft or some fancied lack of crawling
humility toward overblown pomp. As a rule the ill will of a friar meant
for the layman involuntary exile taken at utmost speed or a persecution
to the grave and without defense; it being part of the friars’ system
of government that of any person that dared to offend them a salutary
warning should be made. In the pursuit of this serviceable design, men
put to death for alleged sedition but really because they had fallen
out with the friars were sometimes quartered and hideous fragments of
their bodies nailed up in the towns, [72] as in Spain five hundred
years before.
Father Damaso is the friar that the elder Ibarra has offended. The
power of the System has been put forth. Ibarra, though innocent of any
crime, is arrested and thrust into prison, where he is kept without
examination or trial until he wilts away and dies, crying out the name
of his son. All ignorant of these events, Juan comes home; he knows his
father is dead, but he suspects nothing of foul play. Gradually the
truth is unfolded to him. He has returned full of hope for the Islands,
full of faith in their Government. Gradually he is disillusioned, as
one ugly development after another shows him the blight under which his
people drag out their lives.
Still he knows nothing against Father Damaso. That dark and scowling
figure he greets as his father’s friend.
The views of Island life, sharp, vivid, are like those of a
stereopticon or the wizard Zola. There is a native woman, Sisa, married
to a worthless dog of a husband who beats her, robs her, and gets
drunk. All her life centers in her two boys, Basilio and Crispin. They
earn a pittance each, working for the sacristan of a church in another
village, ringing the bells and cleaning the chancel. They are to come
home to-night, and Sisa has been preparing something to please them, a
supper with things they like to eat, earned by her hard work and
self-denial. She has bought some small fishes, picked the most
beautiful tomatoes in her little garden (for she knows how fond Crispin
is of tomatoes), and begged from a neighbor some slices of dried wild
boar’s meat and a leg of wild duck. To this she adds the whitest of
rice, which she herself has gleaned from the threshing-floors.
Then her worthless husband comes in and eats most of the boys’ supper.
Sisa says nothing, although she feels as if she herself were being
eaten. His hunger at last appeased, he remembers to ask for the boys.
Then Sisa smiles happily and resolves that she will not eat that night
because what remains is not enough for three. The father has asked for
his sons; for her that is better than a banquet.
The boys do not come, and the father goes away. At the church serious
trouble has fallen upon Basilio and Crispin. The curate has accused
Crispin of stealing and demands restitution; otherwise, the boy, says
the humane curate, will be beaten to death. That night while their
mother waits for them they are kept ringing the great bells in the
church tower, for a storm is raging and it is well known that the sound
of church-bells ringing keeps off the lightning. In the midst of this
employment, the sacristan suddenly appears, fines the boys for not
ringing in tune, renews the accusation of theft (which is quite
groundless), and drags Crispin off to punishment, locking Basilio in
the tower. He hears his brother’s cries for help dying out in the
distance. Then he climbs the belfry, unties the ropes from the bells,
ties them to the railing, lets himself out of a window to the ground,
and runs home. But Crispin never appears. He has been shot and killed
by a Civil Guard.
Two or three days later Civil Guards come to Sisa’s house and arrest
her for Crispin’s alleged theft. She is paraded through the streets as
a common malefactor and locked in the common jail. Basilio has crept to
the woods. Sisa begins to learn of Crispin’s fate. When she is released
from jail she has become insane.
She wanders about the country, living on alms and sleeping in the
woods. Basilio comes home to find her gone and starts in search of her.
When at last he comes in sight of her, she in her madness believes him
to be another enemy and flees. He runs after her and overtakes her in
time to hold her in his arms as she dies.
The story of Sisa is interwoven with the development of the story of
Ibarra.
Gradually the truth is unfolded to him, the legalized murder of his
father, the dishonor to his father’s ashes; for, buried in a cemetery,
the body of the elder Ibarra has been, at the friar’s orders,
disinterred [73] and cast into the lake. Still he does not quite
perceive what part Damaso has played in this nor understand that he
himself is pricked next upon the roll of death. Soon or late, he must
learn all. Then will devolve upon him the duty of vengeance. For
safety’s sake the friar plans to silence him betimes.
Meanwhile, the youth, in whom Rizal has typified the large generous
notions he himself once entertained of Utopia under the rule of Spain,
gives himself to projects for the elevation of his countrymen. He is
impressed with the darkness of ignorance around him, with the almost
comic futility of the educational system, which is no system at all.
Meeting an old schoolmaster, he discusses these conditions, and thus is
laid bare to us the means by which the native mind is kept in its
prison-house.
“How many pupils have you now?” asked Ibarra, with interest, after
a pause.
“More than two hundred on the roll, but only about twenty-five in
actual attendance.”
“How does that happen?”
... The schoolmaster shook his head sadly. “A poor teacher
struggles against not only prejudice but also against certain
influences. First, it would be necessary to have a suitable place
and not to do as I must do at present—hold the classes under the
convento by the side of the padre’s carriage. There the children,
who like to read aloud, very naturally disturb the padre, and he
often comes down, nervous, especially when he has his attacks,
yells at them, and even insults me. You know that one can neither
teach nor learn under such conditions....”
The curate is the same Father Damaso, the friar with whom Ibarra’s
father had quarreled. In his overbearing arrogance he has wantonly
insulted the poor schoolmaster, who goes on thus with his narrative:
“What was I to do with only my meager salary, to collect which I
have to get the curate’s approval and make a trip to the capital of
the province—what could I do against him, the foremost religious
and political power in the town, backed up by his order, feared by
the Government, rich, powerful, sought after and listened to,
always believed and heeded by everybody? Although he insulted me, I
had to remain silent, for if I had replied he would have had me
removed from my position, by which I should lose all hope in my
chosen profession. Nor would the cause of education gain anything,
but all to the contrary; for everybody would take the curate’s
side, they would curse me and call me presumptuous, proud, vain, a
bad Christian, uncultivated; and if not those things, then
‘anti-Spanish’ and ‘a filibuster.’ Of a schoolmaster neither
learning nor zeal is expected; only resignation, humility, and
inaction are demanded. May God pardon me if I have gone against my
conscience and my judgment, but I was born in this country, I have
to live, I have a mother; so I have abandoned myself to my fate
like a corpse tossed about by the waves.”
He has tried to abolish whipping in his school. “I endeavored to make
study a thing of love and joy, I wished to make the primer not a black
book bathed in the tears of childhood but a friend that was going to
reveal wonderful secrets; of the school-room not a place of sorrows but
a scene of intellectual refreshment. So, little by little, I abolished
corporal punishment, taking the instruments of it entirely away from
the school and replacing their stimulus with emulation and personal
pride.”
The innovation was regarded as sacrilege and heresy.
“The curate sent for me, and, fearing another scene, I greeted him
curtly in Tagalog. On this occasion he was very serious with me. He
said that I was exposing the children to destruction, that I was
wasting time, that I was not fulfilling my duties, that the father
who spared the rod was spoiling the child—according to the Holy
Ghost—that learning enters with the blood, [74] and so on. He
quoted to me sayings of barbarous times as if it were enough that a
thing had been said by the ancients to make it indisputable,
according to which we ought to believe that there really existed
those monsters which in past ages were imaged and sculptured in the
palaces and temples. Finally, he charged me to be more careful and
return to the old system, otherwise he would report me to the
alcalde of the province.”
So in despair he brought out the whips again, and sadness reigned in
the school where he had introduced happiness and work. The number of
his pupils was reduced to a fifth of the former attendance.
“So then I am now working to the end that the children become
changed into parrots and know by heart so many things of which they
do not understand a word.”
It is doubtless a perfect picture of education in the Philippines and
outlines the size of the task that Rizal had shouldered. [75]
“Let us not be so pessimistic,” said Ibarra.
He resolves to build and endow for the town a modern school-house. As
the time comes for the laying of the corner-stone, at which ceremony he
is to officiate, he receives a mysterious warning that an attempt will
be made upon his life. This he seemingly disregards; and yet, when he
must descend into the trench and stand beneath the corner-stone
suspended from the scaffold, he looks anxiously above him, watches the
apparatus, and is tense for a leap. There is a sound of cracking
timber; in an instant the great stone falls, but he has sprung aside
and saved his life.
At the dinner with which the day’s ceremonials are concluded, Padre
Damaso is a conspicuous guest. Not even yet is Ibarra, despite certain
intimations, aware that Damaso was his father’s remorseless enemy, that
the gloomy, vindictive friar had put forth the hidden powers of the
orders and dragged his father to death. But at the dinner Damaso, stung
with baffled hate because Ibarra has escaped the gin so cunningly
spread for his life, loses all self-control and utters against Ibarra’s
father an insult no son could be expected to endure. Ibarra springs at
his throat, knocks him down, and stands glowering over him. In the eyes
of the petrified spectators murder is about to be done, when Maria
Clara, Capitán Tiago’s reputed daughter, throws herself between the
infuriated youth and the prostrate friar.
Maria Clara is Ibarra’s sweetheart. She pleads with him with her eyes,
and he recovers enough self-command to take himself away.
But the assault upon the friar is his ruin. He has committed the
unpardonable sin, the blackest crime in the calendar: he has laid
“violent hand upon a friar, representative at once in his own person of
the might of the church and the majesty of the realm.” That day he is
excommunicated, a punishment that in the Philippines, nineteenth
century, retained all the poignancy it had in Darkest Europe, 1000 A.D.
He has become a moral leper.
Capitán Tiago breaks off the engagement with his daughter; in his view
the word of the friars is sacred, oracular, final. He is one of the
great portraits of the book, this Capitán Tiago; a typical Filipino of
the class that bent assiduously at the feet of power. The drawing is
like many a sketch in Rizal’s note-books, a piece of startling realism.
Tiago is a living, talking, sputtering, foolish thing of flesh and
blood that we see and hear. Even though we have never seen another
being of his kind anywhere, we see him in this picture-making. He is
vain, pretentious, fearful, abjectly superstitious, filled with strange
notions about the influences of graven images and the grandeur of
Spain; a Filipino perverted by some wealth, the allurements of a social
ambition, and an education grotesquely awry. Against the ills of the
flesh and the chances of loss in the cockpit, he has recourse to the
same arcana: so many candles burned before this shrine or that, so many
bombs to be exploded at a fiesta, or so many masses bought at current
rates. In all things, to cultivate the favor of the friars is the
boundary of his more earthly philosophy. Ibarra, rich and eminent,
newly returned from Spain with the gloss of a European education fresh
upon him, is in his eyes a delectable son-in-law. Ibarra under the ban
of the friars is an object of horror.
The affection between Ibarra and Maria Clara has the welcome fragrance
of purity and exaltation in the midst of these miasmas. They had been
playmates in childhood, they had grown up together, they had really
plighted their troth when Ibarra went to Europe. He had been
chivalrously true to her in all his seven years of travel. He has come
back to her sure of her love and looking forward to an early marriage.
Upon all such dreams Tiago sets his foot; he not only forbids any
further communication with Ibarra, but he favors another lover, one
Linares, a feeble-willed young Spaniard brought forward with suspicious
haste by Father Damaso. With this candidate, against the vehement
protests of Maria Clara, an engagement is quickly made.
Meantime, the governor-general comes to the town and hears about the
troubles of Ibarra, whose father he had known and admired. The
governor-general is a type of many that Spain sent to the Philippines,
excellent in purpose, well aware of the malignant fever of friarism,
resolved to withstand it, and invariably finding his good resolutions
crumbling under him. Yet, in this instance, he will save if he can the
son of his old friend from the clutches of the modern Inquisition.
Between the friars and the archbishops of Manila is a smoldering feud,
for the archbishop is usually chosen outside of the four orders. The
governor-general nudges the archbishop; the archbishop cancels the
excommunication; and Ibarra, escaped from this damnation, is doomed by
the friars to another still worse.
With Tiago the lifting of the ban upon Ibarra makes no difference; he
is still anathema to the all-powerful orders. The campaign for Linares
and against Ibarra is waged vigorously with the aid of many candles on
many shrines and the promises of many bombs. At fiestas, it should be
explained, the custom was to burn great quantities of fireworks by day
and night; and the piety of the devout, as expressed in squibs,
crackers, rockets, pin-wheels, and bombs, was supposed to insure their
salvation. In this form of divine worship, the friars had a commercial
interest; it may be believed that if a doubt of its perfect efficacy
occurred to them they managed to master it.
Under the Spanish social system, Philippine maidens of all complexions
married whomsoever their parents told them to marry and silenced their
objections, if they had any; hence, in the Tiago household the
preparations for the marriage of Maria Clara and the half-witted
Linares are urged with a sweet confidence. Maria Clara herself
contributes the only flaw in these proceedings. She falls desperately
ill.
News of her condition is brought to Ibarra by the person in the book
called “the Pilot Elias,” who is one of the pivots on which the
narrative turns. It was Elias that warned Ibarra of the plot to crush
out his life with the corner-stone. In a picnic fishing expedition
Ibarra had saved Elias from the jaws of a cayman (crocodile) and Elias
had sworn his gratitude. He is evidently much above his caste, which is
that of a boatman; he has had an education. In and out of the story he
flits mysteriously until his true vocation is revealed; he is a man
with a history, a victim of the prevailing despotism, forced by his
sufferings to ponder the ills of his people and become at last a
secret, restless, wary, and intelligent agitator against the System of
his day.
It is through him that Rizal voices his protests. As the plot unfolds,
Ibarra wins Elias’ story. We shall repeat it here, but with a preface
of warning. In these times, the average reader, the more if he is an
American, will look upon the tale as a wild extravagance, so easily are
the conditions of one generation obliterated in the next, and so
difficult is it to believe the life of one country is not like the life
of all countries. Yet what Elias is fabled here to have told Ibarra
might have been taken with changes of names from veritable records.
Exactly these things happened in the Philippine Islands in the
nineteenth century, even in the last decade of the nineteenth century.
They happened in many regions and to many persons. Still worse things
happened, if worse can be conceived; for lust and greed and reversion
ran savage riot under two conditions that have always been hothouses
for such growths: autocracy, and distance from the world’s observation.
ELIAS’ STORY
“Some sixty years ago my grandfather dwelt in Manila, being
employed as a bookkeeper in a Spanish commercial house. He was then
very young, was married, and had a son. One night, from some
unknown cause, the warehouse burned down. The fire was communicated
to the dwelling of his employer and from there to many other
buildings. The losses were great, a scapegoat was sought, and the
merchant accused my grandfather. In vain he protested his
innocence, but he was poor and unable to pay the great lawyers; so
he was condemned to be flogged publicly and paraded through the
streets of Manila. Not so very long since they still used the
infamous method of punishment which the people call ‘caballo y
vaca,’ and which is a thousand times more dreadful than death
itself. Abandoned by all except his young wife, my grandfather saw
himself tied to a horse, followed by an unfeeling crowd, and
whipped on every street-corner in the sight of men, his brothers,
and in the neighborhood of numerous temples of a God of peace. When
the wretch, now for ever disgraced, had satisfied the vengeance of
man with his blood, his tortures, and his cries, he had to be taken
off the horse, for he had become unconscious. Would to God that he
had died! But by one of those refinements of cruelty he was given
his liberty. His wife, pregnant at the time, vainly begged from
door to door for work or alms in order to care for her sick husband
and their poor son, but who would trust the wife of an incendiary
and a disgraced man? The wife, then, had to become a prostitute!”
Ibarra rose in his seat.
“Oh, don’t get excited! Prostitution was not now a dishonor for her
or a disgrace to her husband; for them honor and shame no longer
existed. The husband recovered from his wounds and came with his
wife and child to hide himself in the mountains of this province.
Here they lived several months, miserable, alone, hated and shunned
by all. The wife gave birth to a sickly child, which fortunately
died. Unable to endure such misery and being less courageous than
his wife, my grandfather, in despair at seeing his sick wife
deprived of all care and assistance, hanged himself. His corpse
rotted in sight of the son, who was scarcely able to care for his
sick mother, and the stench from it led to their discovery. Her
husband’s death was attributed to her, for of what is the wife of a
wretch, a woman who has been a prostitute besides, not believed to
be capable? If she swears, they call her a perjurer; if she weeps,
they say she is acting; and that she blasphemes when she calls on
God. Nevertheless, they had pity on her condition and waited for
the birth of another child before they flogged her. You know how
the friars spread the belief that the Indians can only be managed
by blows: read what Padre Gaspar de San Agustin says!
“A woman thus condemned will curse the day on which her child is
born, and this, besides prolonging her torture, violates every
maternal sentiment. Unfortunately, she brought forth a healthy
child. Two months afterward, the sentence was executed to the great
satisfaction of the men who thought that thus they were performing
their duty. Not being at peace in these mountains, she then fled
with her two sons to a neighboring province, where they lived like
wild beasts, hating and hated. The elder of the two boys still
remembered, even amid so much misery, the happiness of his infancy,
so he became a tulisan as soon as he found himself strong enough.
Before long the bloody name of Bâlat spread from province to
province, a terror to the people, because in his revenge he did
everything with blood and fire. The younger, who was by nature
kind-hearted, resigned himself to his shameful fate along with his
mother, and they lived on what the woods afforded, clothing
themselves in the cast-off rags of travelers. She had lost her
name, being known only as the convict, the prostitute, the
scourged. He was known as the son of his mother only, because the
gentleness of his disposition led every one to believe that he was
not the son of the incendiary and because any doubt as to the
morality of the Indios can be held reasonable.
“At last, one day the notorious Bâlat fell into the clutches of the
authorities, who exacted of him a strict accounting for his crimes,
and of his mother for having done nothing to rear him properly. One
morning the younger brother went to look for his mother, who had
gone into the woods to gather mushrooms and had not returned. He
found her stretched out on the ground under a cotton-wood tree
beside the highway, her face turned toward the sky, her eyes fixed
and staring, her clenched hands buried in the blood-stained earth.
Some impulse moved him to look up in the direction toward which the
eyes of the dead woman were staring, and he saw hanging from a
branch a basket and in the basket the gory head of his brother!”
“My God!” ejaculated Ibarra.
“That might have been the exclamation of my father,” continued
Elias coldly. “The body of the brigand had been cut up and the
trunk buried, but his limbs were distributed and hung up in
different towns. If ever you go from Calamba to Santo Tomas you
will still see a withered lomboy-tree where one of my uncle’s legs
hung rotting—nature has blasted the tree so that it no longer grows
or bears fruit. The same was done with the other limbs, but the
head, as the best part of the person and the portion most easily
recognizable, was hung up in front of his mother’s hut!”
Ibarra bowed his head.
“The boy fled like one accursed,” Elias went on. “He fled from town
to town by mountain and valley. When he thought that he had reached
a place where he was not known, he hired himself out as a laborer
in the house of a rich man in the province of Tayabas. His activity
and the gentleness of his character gained him the good will of all
that did not know his past, and by his thrift and economy he
succeeded in accumulating a little capital. He was still young, he
thought his sorrows buried in the past, and he dreamed of a happy
future. His pleasant appearance, his youth, and his somewhat
unfortunate condition won him the love of a young woman of the
town, but he dared not ask for her hand from fear that his past
might become known. But love is stronger than anything else, and
they wandered from the straight path; so, to save the woman’s
honor, he risked everything by asking her in marriage. The records
were sought, and his whole past became known. The girl’s father was
rich and succeeded in having him prosecuted. He did not try to
defend himself but admitted everything, and so was sent to prison.
The woman gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, who were nurtured
in secret and made to believe that their father was dead—no
difficult matter, since at a tender age they saw their mother die,
and they gave little thought to tracing genealogies. As our
maternal grandfather was rich our childhood passed happily. My
sister and I were brought up together, loving one another as only
twins can love when they have no other affections. When quite young
I was sent to study in the Jesuit College; and my sister, in order
that we might not be completely separated, entered the Concordia
College. After our brief education was finished, since we desired
only to be farmers, we returned to the town to take possession of
the inheritance left us by our grandfather. We lived happily for a
time, the future smiled on us, we had many servants, our fields
produced abundant harvests, and my sister was about to be married
to a young man whom she adored and who responded equally to her
affection.
“But in a dispute over money and by reason of my haughty
disposition at that time, I alienated the good will of a distant
relative, and one day he cast in my face my doubtful birth and
shameful descent. I thought it all a slander and demanded
satisfaction. The tomb which covered so much rottenness was again
opened, and to my consternation the whole truth came out to
overwhelm me. To add to our sorrow, we had had for many years an
old servant who had endured all my whims without ever leaving us,
contenting himself merely with weeping and groaning at the rough
jests of the other servants. I don’t know how my relative had found
it out, but the fact is that he had this old man summoned into
court and made him tell the truth—that old servant, who had clung
to his beloved children, and whom I had abused many times, was my
father! Our happiness faded away, I gave up our fortune, my sister
lost her betrothed, and with our father we left the town to seek
refuge elsewhere. The thought that he had contributed to our
misfortunes shortened the old man’s days, but before he died I
learned from his lips the whole story of the sorrowful past.
“My sister and I were left alone. She wept a great deal, but, even
in the midst of such great sorrows as heaped themselves upon us,
she could not forget her love. Without complaining, without
uttering a word, she saw her former sweetheart married to another
girl; but I watched her gradually sicken without being able to
console her. One day she disappeared and it was in vain that I
sought everywhere, in vain I made inquiries about her. About six
months afterward I learned that about that time, after a flood on
the lake, there had been found in some rice-fields bordering on the
beach at Calamba the corpse of a young woman who had been either
drowned or murdered, for she had had, so they said, a knife
sticking in her breast. The officials of that town published the
fact in the country round about; but no one came to claim the body,
no young woman apparently had disappeared. From the description
they gave me afterward of her dress, her ornaments, the beauty of
her countenance, and her abundant hair, I recognized in her my poor
sister.
“Since then I have wandered from province to province. My
reputation and my history are in the mouths of many. They attribute
great deeds to me, sometimes calumniating me, but I pay little
attention to men, keeping ever on my way. Such in brief is my
story, a story of one of the judgments of men.”
Elias fell silent as he rowed along.
“I still believe that you are not wrong,” murmured Crisóstomo
[Ibarra] in a low voice, “when you say that justice should seek to
do good by rewarding virtue and educating the criminals. Only, it’s
impossible, Utopian! And where could be secured so much money, so
many new employees?”
“For what, then, are the priests who proclaim their mission of
peace and charity? Is it more meritorious to moisten the head of a
child with water, to give it salt to eat, than to awake in the
benighted conscience of a criminal that spark which God has granted
to every man to light him to his welfare? Is it more humane to
accompany a criminal to the scaffold than to lead him along the
difficult path from vice to virtue? Don’t they also pay spies,
executioners, Civil-Guards? These things, besides being dirty, also
cost money.”
“My friend, neither you nor I, although we may wish it, can
accomplish this.”
“Alone, it is true, we are nothing, but take up the cause of the
people, unite yourself with the people, be not heedless of their
cries, set an example to the rest, spread the idea of what is
called a fatherland!”
“What the people ask for is impossible. We must wait.”
“Wait! To wait means to suffer!”
“If I should ask for it, the powers that be would laugh at me.”
Elias desires Ibarra to put himself at the head of the people and
secure their emancipation from these horrors. Ibarra draws back; all
the instincts of his class and the prejudices of his education are
against anything of that kind.
“But if the people support you?” said Elias.
“Never! I will never be the one to lead the multitude to get by
force what the Government does not think proper to grant, no! If I
should ever see the multitude armed I would place myself on the
side of the Government, for in such a mob I should not see my
countrymen. I desire the country’s welfare; therefore I would build
a school-house. I seek it by means of instruction, by progressive
advancement; without light there is no road.”
“Neither is there liberty without strife!” answered Elias.
“The fact is that I don’t want that liberty!”
“The fact is that without liberty there is no light,” replied the
pilot with warmth.
It is like a conversation in Rizal’s own heart between the spirit of
the college and the spirit of his country. Into it, beyond a doubt, he
put the conflict that was torturing his soul. The spirit of love and
good will in him grappling like Jacob with the soul that told him that
from oppressions by violence could come only revolt by violence.
It may be profitable to follow this farther. It is a page of Rizal’s
own revealing always overlooked by those that insist he was opposed to
Philippine independence.
“You may say [the pilot goes on] that you are only slightly
acquainted with your country, and I believe you. You don’t see the
struggle that is preparing; you don’t see the cloud on the horizon.
The fight is beginning in the sphere of ideas, to descend later
into the arena, which will be dyed with blood. I hear the voice of
God—woe unto them who would oppose it! For them history has not
been written!”
No one can believe Rizal wrote this without feeling it in his heart and
soul.
Elias was transfigured; standing uncovered, with his manly face
illuminated by the moon, there was something extraordinary about
him. He shook his long hair and went on:
“Don’t you see how everything is awakening? The sleep has lasted
for centuries, but one day the thunderbolt struck, and, in
striking, infused life.”
He means the slaying of the guiltless priests, Fathers Burgos, Gomez,
and Zamora, victims to the homicidal mania that descended upon the
Government after the revolt of 1872.
“Since then [the pilot continues] new tendencies are stirring our
spirits, and these tendencies, to-day scattered, will some day be
united, guided by the God who has not failed other peoples, and who
will not fail us, for his cause is the cause of liberty!” [76]
The trap the friars have prepared for Ibarra is a thing infamous in
Philippine history, and yet so common that in fact and not in fiction
it has sent scores of innocent men to their deaths. It had never been
known to fail. Agents provocateurs stage a pretended revolt. Nothing is
easier; the materials are always to hand; likewise the occasion. It is
but necessary to take the latest outrage by the Civil Guard and stir
some one to object to it. The rest follows automatically. In this
instance Ibarra is the pretended instigator, although he has never
heard of the wrong he is supposed to resent.
Elias warns him of what is afoot and urges him to escape; innocent as
he is, he shall have no chance for his life before the tribunal that
will try him if he waits for arrest. He will not go until he has had
word with Maria Clara. The last scene between them is excellent drama;
he gets under her window in a boat and climbs up the vines. For the
charge of complicity in the stage rebellion is no basis except a letter
that seven years before he had written to her. Some phrases that might
be construed to suggest a vague discontent with conditions in the
Philippines make up the entire case. On slighter evidence many a man
has been tortured first and gone next to the Golgotha at Bagumbayan
Field. The friars have this letter. How did they get it when for so
many years it had been one of the dearest possessions of Maria Clara?
Ibarra can surmise only that she has willingly surrendered it and so
betrayed him. In that last interview he learns that it was filched from
her by the friar Silva, whose interest in her has been more than
ecclesiastical and who on the same occasion has disclosed to her the
facts as to her own parentage.
She is not the daughter of Capitán Tiago but of Father Damaso—an
illegitimate daughter.
Satisfied that she is innocent, Ibarra now consents to escape from his
foes. Elias, the pilot, who has so often befriended him, is waiting
below in the banca. They row up the Pasig River. When they approach a
soldier, Ibarra hides himself in the bottom of the boat under the
freight. At last the Civil Guards are in pursuit. Elias tries to escape
by hard rowing. The Guards begin to fire. Elias slips overboard. Taking
him for Ibarra, the Guards follow in their banca, firing constantly.
The hunted man is seen to sink. When the Guards come up they think they
see blood. They take the news back to Manila that Ibarra, the desperate
revolutionist, trying to escape, has been shot and killed. At the word
Maria Clara gives up all earthly hope and flees to a nunnery.
CHAPTER VI
LEONORA RIVERA
By the title of his novel Rizal meant not that he was touching a person
forbidden, but a subject. The words he had found in a Latin version of
the New Testament in the passage where the risen Christ is beheld by
Mary Magdalene; but he used these words in a sense wholly different
from the scriptural significance. Conditions in the Philippines he had
thought of as having become a social cancer that persisted first
because of a notion that nobody must treat or touch it. Of all the men
of his times and country, he was the only man that had the courage to
break through this barrier and the skill and perfect knowledge to
dissect the hideous growth behind.
With one of the first copies that came from the press he wrote to his
close friend, Dr. Blumentritt, a letter in which he lays bare his own
idea of his work: [77]
The novel [he says] tells of many things that until now have not
been touched upon. They are so peculiar to ourselves that we have
been sensitive about them. In this book I have attempted what no
one else seems to have been willing to do. For one thing, I have
dared to answer the calumnies that for centuries have been heaped
upon us and upon our country. I have written of the social
condition of the Philippines and of the life of the Filipinos. I
have told the truth about our beliefs, our hopes, our longings, our
complaints, and our sorrows. I have tried to show the difference
between real religion and the hypocrisy that under its cloak has
impoverished and brutalized us. I have brought out the real meaning
of the dazzling and deceptive words of our countrymen. I have
related our mistakes, our vices, and our faults. I have exposed how
weakly we accept miseries as inevitable. Where there has been
reason for it, I have given praise. I have not wept over our
misfortunes, but rather laughed at them.
No one would want to read a book full of tears, and then, too,
laughter is the best means of concealing sorrow.
The incidents that I have related are all true and have actually
occurred.
But for his habitual reticence about himself he might have said much
more; if he had known his own powers he might have spoken of his
lifelike delineations; he might have urged a gift like prophecy. All
the impression of a strong personal relation one has throughout the
reading of “Noli Me Tangere” is well founded. Into it Rizal was writing
himself. Ibarra was a prefiguration, in some respects marvelously
accurate, of himself in the days at hand when he should return to his
native country. Of the material of the book the greater part had been
verified in his own experiences. The imprisonment of Ibarra’s father
was the story of Rizal’s own mother. Father Damaso he had seen and
watched, and Father Silva no less. In Tasio, the philosophical
evolutionist, he had but drawn his own elder brother, Paciano. But
above all, the story of Maria Clara was a tragedy from his own life; at
that time a tragedy he might have feared but had not as yet
experienced, strange as that may seem.
Maria Clara is Rizal’s cousin, Leonora Rivera, his sweetheart and first
great disappointment. She was born in Camiling, province of Tarlac, on
April 11, 1867, the daughter of Antonio Rivera, who was Rizal’s uncle,
benefactor, and ardent partisan. [78] She was twelve years old when the
family moved to Manila, where they rented lodgings to students in Santo
Tomas and the Ateneo. Among these, after a time, came Cousin José
Rizal, at about the third shifting of his quarters in Manila. Leonora
was enrolled as an undergraduate at Concordia College for girls, where
Rizal’s youngest sister, Soledad, was likewise a student. He would
sometimes spend a half-holiday at Concordia to see and to amuse his
sister, whereupon he and his beautiful cousin became good friends,
although she was six years his junior. She was not only beautiful, but
she seems to have had an unusual intellect of the kind that would be
likely to attract Rizal; for she was in fact, and not by repute alone,
studious, thoughtful, of the Malay seriousness, but with also the Malay
delight in music. She sang well; she is said to have played the piano
with a skill that distinguished her even in the corps of able pianists
of which Concordia was proud. If so, the eminence was not lightly won;
for the worthy Sisters that conducted that institution taught music
thoroughly and well.
She must have been also of a sweet and gentle spirit; all the memories
extant of her twenty years after her death included this tribute. The
various commentators that have differed often about other phases of
Philippine life have been of one mind in praising the typical educated
Filipino woman and yet have not exaggerated her worth. In a world
wearied of artificiality, her simple sincerity shines to cheer as much
as to charm. Visitors that have observed her well have usually noted
the excellence of her mind, the honesty of her walk, and the reserve
strength of her character. Rizal’s mother was of this order, the
diligent ruler of the household, the laborious instructor of her
children; and, when the blows of the Spanish tyranny fell upon her
head, bearing them with the proud fortitude of a Roman matron of the
republic. Doubtless, the halo of Rizal and Leonora’s own romantic story
have magnified her intellectual stature; yet when all allowance is made
for exaggeration that may color the work of a friendly biographer, the
fact is apparent that she also was of this same admirable womanhood.
The first time she seems to have suspected in herself a feeling for her
handsome young cousin stronger than cousinly regard was on a day at her
father’s house when the young leader of the Filipino forces at the
Ateneo was brought in with a broken head and covered with dust, blood,
and glory. It was not the first time he had been so ornamented, but
only the first time she had seen him thus. At the sight of the youthful
champion of the Filipino people disabled early in the fray, Leonora ran
with speed to get warm water and bandages to dress his hurts. The rest
was easy and according to the formulæ for such cases well known and
accepted. She loved him for the battles he waged, and he loved her that
she nursed him so tenderly.
A year later with the full approbation of their parents they were
betrothed. Mr. Rivera was fond of his nephew; to the aunt, José was at
least not objectionable, though she seems to have been a lady of a
captious and changeable temperament. It was the uncle that first
suggested Rizal’s withdrawal from the Philippines when it became
evident that the governing class had marked him as a young man to be
suppressed. Mr. Rivera knew well enough what that would mean in Santo
Tomas and elsewhere: every avenue closed, every possible obstacle
thrown in his way. The malice he had aroused he could hope to defeat in
some measure if he could win in Europe a training and a distinction
that would on his return provide him with a practice in spite of
Spanish opposition. Mr. Rivera assisted his flight, sent him money
while he was pursuing his studies in Madrid, and showed at all times a
sincere interest in his welfare. The lovers had a tender parting just
before Rizal went aboard his ship that night; as a sign or image of his
presence when he should be far away he left with her a poem that began:
The summons sounds, predestinate and grim,
The iron clanging of the tongue of fate,
That drives me on a pathway strange and dim
And strikes my flowers of hope all desolate.
Thou know’st,—thou other, dearer soul of mine—
How hard it is to say farewell, and part;
Through clouds that darken, suns that shine,
I venture—but I leave with thee my heart.
At Madrid he wrote her regularly and with deep affection and received
replies that, his diary says, gave him unbounded joy, as these entries
indicate:
1884. January 10. Received two letters, one from Uncle Antonio
[Leonora’s father] and the other from L. Nov. 30. The letter from
Leonora was lovely with a sweet ending.
January 25. To-night I had a sad dream. I returned to the
Philippines, but oh, what a sad reception! Leonora had been
unfaithful; an inexcusable unfaithfulness without any remedy.
April 13. To-day I received letters from Leonora, Uncle Antonio,
and Changoy. I am well satisfied with what Leonora writes but not
with her state of health. [79]
No trait is more to be emphasized in observing the Filipino people than
their respect for womanhood. It is hardly less than phenomenal. In
Burma the women may have as much power; in Filipinas they have power
and respect as well as affection. Rizal was all of this order; the most
sacred object in the world was his mother; the next most sacred the
woman that should be his wife; after her came his sisters. He had
developed in advance of his times a certain philosophy of feminism that
has since become much more general. In his letters he dwelt upon it. He
thought the Filipino woman might be one of the great instruments for
the deliverance of the country, exercising her power and influence
conscientiously for education and liberty. Therefore, every Filipino
woman ought to prepare herself for this service by utilizing every road
to knowledge and enlarging her understanding of the nation and its
possibilities. He believed that a general effort on these lines by the
educated women would make a profound impression upon the young and be
invaluable in the next generation.
There seems to have been no flaw in his attachment to Leonora; his
career abroad has been searched in vain for a reminiscence of an
escapade. He lived a life of purity and that self-control that he held
to be the first demand of the moral code he professed. Seldom has the
biographer a career like this to write in which appears not enough of
human frailty to spice the narrative. He had made for himself certain
rules of conduct—abstemiousness, temperance, chastity, no wasting of
time, no wasting of health—and to these he adhered with the stern
inflexibility of an ascetic. The artist is usually saved, says Edmund
Clarence Stedman, by his devotion to beauty. Rizal was an artist, and
never has knelt before the ideal of beauty a worshiper more devout. The
beauty of righteousness seemed to rule out of him all promptings to the
coltish excesses of youth; that, and the dignity of his love, and his
conception of the gravity of his mission. He that is called to bring
light to his people must not linger at the wayside inn nor ruin their
hopes by capitulation to man’s grosser senses.
Meantime, the Riveras had moved from Manila to Dagupan, in the province
then called Laguna. The reputation that Rizal had left behind him was
not bettered by the handling it had from the governing class after his
flight. Evil propaganda has always been easy to great power in any
form. In his absence the spies and agents provocateurs of the
Government made it but the day’s work to smear with lies the name of
Rizal. “Some of it will stick,” is the philosophy of the professional
slanderer. In this case the word proved true enough. Mrs. Rivera seems
to have been much affected by the sad decline and fall of her
prospective son-in-law. She was an excellent lady but one that set
exaggerated store by the verdict of society and what Shelley called the
great god “They Say.” Among all colonists everywhere this is a deity of
might. With the slender group of Filipinos that strove to grasp the
skirts of a society drawn disdainfully away from them, the cult
amounted sometimes to a frenzy.
The reports that came from Madrid about Leonora’s lover, or were
affirmed to come thence, were no salve to the mother’s wounded
sensibilities. He was said to associate with sad young dogs,
revolutionists and outcasts and all that, with Filipinos that had been
exiled after the governmental sand-dance of 1872 and with other
agencies of treason. The thought of the career that such a man would
probably have in the Philippines seems to have struck Mrs. Rivera with
inexpressible terror. What her friends and social co-mates would say
when her daughter should be married to one sure to be a pariah if not a
victim of the garrote was beyond her strength to endure.
She had also the strange notion that steals into the minds of some
subjugated people that intermarriage with the dominant color promises
relief from the sting of inferiority. About this time the railroad was
being extended to Dagupan, and a young English engineer, Henry C.
Kipping, came to take charge of the building of the last section of the
new line from Bayambang. His work took him often to Dagupan, where he
met and fell in love with Leonora. He seems to have urged his suit with
ardor and persistence and to have had from the beginning an adroit
partisan in Leonora’s mother. Here had come, as if by the order of
Providence, a means to save her daughter from an unhappy marriage. How
much better to wed an English engineer than a Filipino agitator! With
joy she seized every opportunity to praise the ingenious Kipping, gave
thanks (for she was of a resolute devotion) to the wisdom that had
arranged all this, and even prepared to give it help of her own
devising. [80]
Cold fell her eulogies on Leonora’s ears. When Kipping talked love to
her she told him frankly that she was engaged to marry Rizal, whom she
loved and would always love, and that another suitor was for her
impossible.
Nothing in Kipping’s reports of these chilly receptions daunted Mrs.
Rivera, her heart being set on this match. She knew well the weight of
parental authority among her people. Also, she had faith in the effects
of absence, if judiciously interpreted and assisted. She can hardly
have read the novels of Charles Reade, but that eminent author would
have found in her a character all made to his mind. She now had resort
to an expedient that was one of favorite practice among his own
villains. Many a reader of his it has left cold, deeming it impossible
or extravagant. Behold, then, vindication for the novelist, and
straight from history. Mrs. Rivera augmented the glacial effects of
separation by stopping all letters between the young lovers. To this
end she bribed two postal clerks. [81] For a monthly stipend they
agreed to bring to her all the letters that Leonora wrote to José and
all the letters that José wrote to Leonora.
Months went by and not a word came from Madrid. Leonora began to droop
under the suspense. Skilfully and industriously her mother plied her
with insinuations and the wise shaking of the head so eloquent to the
anxious. We could and if we would, and that line of ambiguous givings
out. At last, she openly declared that Rizal had found another
sweetheart. Leonora hysterically affirmed her faith in her lover. But
the physical fact persisted that mail after mail arrived from Spain and
not a line from Rizal. “He is sick,” said Leonora, “and I am here, I
cannot take care of him.” The next time the expected letter failed she
said deliberately, “I know José. He has given his word. He will die
before he breaks it.”
The mother seems to have known how to beat down this spirit. At last
she brought to an issue the slow, sure undermining in which she had
been employing her wits. “If you truly love me, you ought to remember
that, after God, you owe to me all you are, and after God, then, you
owe me your duty. I urge this marriage, not because it means anything
to me, but because I am your mother. I seek your true happiness. All
the hope of my life is centered upon it. Do you wish to kill your
mother?”
At this, Leonora capitulated. So great is the maternal influence in the
Filipino household it is likely that most other Filipino girls in the
same conditions would have yielded. According to Miss Sevilla,
Leonora’s sympathetic biographer, the daughter now fell into the
mother’s arms and said:
“I owe you my life; I will sacrifice it for you, and make this marriage
as you wish, but you will find that I shall not live long after it. In
return, I ask you three things, that I shall not again be asked to play
or to sing, that my piano shall be kept locked, and that you shall be
at my side when I am married.” [82]
The next day she burned the letters she had received from Rizal before
her mother had interfered with her happiness. Following a Filipino
custom, she put the ashes into a little box which she covered with a
piece of the dress she had worn when she was betrothed and a piece of
the dress she had worn when she yielded to her mother about Kipping.
The box is still in existence. It bears on its covers the letters “J”
and “L” worked in gold. [83]
The wedding was fixed for June 17, at Dagupan. A few days before this
date, Mrs. Rivera was called to Manila by some business transaction in
which she must take a part. She seems to have forgotten the postal
clerks, or they to have forgotten their employment; for while she was
gone a letter arrived from Rizal to Leonora, and it fell into her
hands. She opened it with wonder and trembling, and lo! it was filled
with tender reproaches for her long silence. He had written to her
regularly by every mail, but all these months had come not a word in
answer. Had she forgotten him?
The next scene may be deemed to justify the writers both of fiction and
of melodrama. Leonora waited in silence until her mother returned from
Manila, for her quick intelligence showed her unerringly who had been
the author of this wreck of her happiness. The moment her mother opened
the door the storm broke. Leonora, for once, defied the restraint the
Filipino girl must traditionally feel in the presence of her parents
and spared nobody in her passionate denunciation of the treachery of
which she had been the victim. Mrs. Rivera seems to have admitted
everything and borne with composure the whirlwind of her daughter’s
wrath. She knew that the discovery had come too late to disturb her own
success. The wedding was close at hand, the banns had been cried, the
guests invited, the peculiar Filipino pride was involved and her
daughter would hold to her word.
Kipping was baptized and became a Catholic. The wedding took place at
the appointed hour. Afterward some of her relatives recalled that it
was a ceremony without joy or good omens. They said that from it the
bride returned in a state of chill lassitude. Contrary to her mother’s
hopes, the marriage proved unhappy, and Leonora survived it only two
years.
CHAPTER VII
AGAIN IN THE PHILIPPINES
Still unaware of the ruin that had come upon his hopes, Rizal was
living in Berlin and working on the last chapters of “Noli Me Tangere.”
He had taken cheap lodging in one of those huge modern German
apartment-houses, in the complex depths of which he could bury himself,
press on with his work, and be as remote as Tahaiti. He had known from
the beginning that he must bring out his book at his own expense, poor
as he was, if it was to be published at all. To a European publisher
the subject would seem too unconventional and outlandish; and as for
the Philippines, not a printer there would venture on his life to so
much as look at it. The type was set (in Spanish) in a small job-office
not far from Rizal’s lodging. Of the report that he himself eked out
his remittances by working at times as a compositor in this shop, there
is no satisfactory evidence; he had not previously appeared as a
printer, but with his marvelous dexterity and ease in assimilating all
knowledge he might have picked up even this craft, too, with others,
difficult as it is. If so, he may have enjoyed in Berlin an unusual
experience. He may have been an author putting into type his own copy.
One problem had harassed him. Whence could he hope to get the money to
pay for the publication? He was still largely supported by remittances
from home, from Paciano the ever faithful, from other members of his
family; but these were not more than enough to keep him alive. The
Fates that packed his wallet so full of other good gifts seem to have
omitted a facility in making money, but supplied in its stead an
abnormal power of self-denial. He now started out to save the sum he
needed by inciting the spirit to triumph over the flesh. About this
time there came to visit him in Berlin Maximo Viola, a wealthy and
excellent young Filipino he had known in Madrid. Viola records that he
found the young author living in a rear room and subsisting upon one
meal a day, largely bread and coffee, [84] which were cheap.
The raven had come that was not only to feed this prophet but to lead
him out of the wilderness. Viola’s object had been to invite Rizal to
go with him upon a walking tour through rural Germany and Switzerland.
At the proposal, Rizal’s eyes blazed; no project could be more alluring
to him, as Viola had well known. Then he said that it was impossible;
he could not go. Why impossible? asked Viola. Native pride forbade any
direct answer, but Viola extracted the truth. He was saving money to
publish a book. What kind of a book? Rizal told him, whereupon the
Filipino blood stirred in Viola’s veins also, and he offered on the
spot to advance enough money to bring out the book and then enough to
take Rizal on the walking tour.
A few weeks later, “Noli Me Tangere,” a finished novel of five hundred
pages, was printed and bound and launched upon its eventful way. [85]
The facts about this man would stagger credulity if they were not of so
sure and recent record. This novel of his contains more than two
hundred thousand words. He obtained his medical licentiate at Madrid in
June, 1885, and nothing of his book had been written then; nothing was
written until months later. After a time he went to Paris, where he was
employed as a clinical assistant to a busy oculist and also in pursuing
his studies. Thence he went first to Heidelberg, then to Leipzig, where
he entered the universities. Next we find him in Berlin, again an
active and laborious student. Yet “Noli Me Tangere” was completed on
February 21, 1887. The thing does not seem to be in nature. We cannot
recall another instance in literature of such rapid composition under
the like conditions of distraction.
It was a stormy petrel that he had set free, and trouble began early
because of and around it. His first object was to circulate it in the
Philippines. Nothing could have been more unpromising, with a
censorship keeping watch and ward and an author loathed and feared by
the whole System. Yet he accomplished the difficult feat. He had stout
friends in Barcelona and Madrid, Fernando Canon, Mariano Ponce, Damaso
Ponce, Ramon Batle, and, in especial, Teresina Batle, who was Mr.
Canon’s sweetheart. Her quick wit helped the conspiracy. Rizal sent to
Mr. Batle certain boxes containing copies of his book. These his
friends disguised as dry-goods and the like innocent freight and
forwarded to Manila. Ramon Eguarras and Alejandro Rojas were Manila
proprietors of substance and good repute. They smuggled the boxes past
the official Argus and before his very face. [86] When the authorities
awoke, the fierce new appeal was going from house to house with ominous
rumblings in its wake.
This could not last long. To know what the submerged people were
reading and thinking was one of the chief businesses of the bureau of
spies and department of sleuthing. Soon the censor was hot upon the
trail of this omen of unrest. A copy of the book was brought to him; he
read it with a horror that seems to have shaken his soul. Now the
attention of Government was called to the scandalous work. Government,
ever responsive to such ill news, appointed a committee of solemn owls
from the faculty of Santo Tomas, no less, to study and report upon a
literary felony so momentous; Government being apparently impressed
with the notion that a crisis was near and revolution was to be crushed
as usual in the serpent’s egg. For this nothing could be so effective
as the weight of an awe-inspiring authority from the university. No
great deliberation was needed to enable the committee to reach its
findings. In what was plainly intended to be a blasting fire of
ecclesiastical wrath, book and author were condemned, and Government
was austerely warned that here was a most insidious and perilous attack
upon all the safeguards of society, upon law and order, civilization,
monarchy, the supremacy of Spain, business, holy church, and religion
itself. [87]
Long experimentation with the surviving methods of the Inquisition had
made the Government expert in these matters. It issued at once a decree
excluding from the pious Islands a work of such sacrilege and ordered
diligent search to be made for any copies that might have slipped in to
corrupt virtue and overthrow the king. Wherever such copies might be
found they were to be burned by the public executioner. Most rigorous
punishments waited upon the heels of this decree. Any Filipino found
after a certain date in possession of a copy of “Noli Me Tangere” was
to suffer imprisonment or deportation, with the loss of all his
property; this to be confiscated for the benefit of whomsoever should
inform against him. Despite all this valorous resolving and proclaiming
and shaking of the long ears of senile decrepitude, the book continued
to come in and to be circulated. One may suspect that what the
Government chiefly effected was gratuitous advertisement. In a short
time “Noli Me Tangere” became the first topic of conversation
throughout the educated circles in the islands. The classes whose vices
and villainies were most fiercely attacked in it were its most
determined readers. Let the Government do its utmost to annihilate the
book; in the teeth of decrees, Civil Guards, spies, and inquisitors,
Rizal’s purposes were already accomplished. The corrupt, greedy,
tyrannical friar, the plundering, swaggering, brutal Spanish officer,
the beneficiaries of the System and those consenting to it, saw
themselves for the first time pilloried in print. [88]
About this process is always something more potent and salutary than
can be easily explained. It is the elusive, indomitable spirit of that
pitiless publicity, at once the armed champion of modern social
progress, the healer of its diseases, and the corrector of its errors.
Suppose the social malefactor to know full well, as well as he knows
anything, that when he reads in print the story of his misdeeds not one
hundred other persons are likely to see it; he is shaken with ineffable
alarm, nevertheless. The magic of the printed page overwhelms and
confounds him; in his ear every type-letter is a separate demon yelling
“Scoundrel!” Suppose him to have known theretofore that one hundred
thousand men were saying among themselves this that he now reads in
print; the knowledge would have disturbed him not to the quiver of an
eyelash. But to have it thus in visible record, open to the world’s
eye—intolerable! Many a man case-hardened otherwise to conscience or
reproof has fled to suicide before that unwavering finger and
relentless condemnation.
The life of all this is truth. Against printed words that are not true
even the guilty can make a stand, but it is invincible verity that
leaves him naked and trembling. When the first cold shiver had gone by
of the discovery that some one had at last dared to put into print the
horror of the Philippines, one cry for vengeance went up from the
stripped and shamed exploiters. It was a cry like the angry snarl of
hurt hyenas, ready to tear into pieces whomsoever should fall into
their den.
Presently there came among them the very man of their desire, the
author of all this, the object of all their furious hatred;
unsuspectingly he walked into their jungle.
When he had finished his book Rizal felt free to make the excursion
Viola had proposed. They tramped together through remote Germany and
saw something of Switzerland and of Austria. Rizal, as he went, studied
peasant life, and diligently he compared it with the conditions of the
Philippine farmers. At the end of the tour, he went to Dresden. There
he found that by reputation he was already known to Dr. A. B. Meyer and
other scientists, most of whom speedily became his friends. [89]
For some weeks the museums of Dresden detained him; now the splendid
collection of pictures, and now the unusual specimens in the zoölogical
and ethnological museums. Thence he passed to Leitmeritz, old Bohemia,
where he began that close and intimate friendship with Dr. Ferdinand
Blumentritt, the famous ethnologist, that was to last so long as Rizal
lived. For months they had been in correspondence; they had even
progressed in their letters to the stage of a more than ordinary
esteem; for Rizal, as we have seen, having so many other good gifts,
had also this abundantly, that he could cause his real self to shine
through the imperfect medium of the written word and make it appear
what it was, a spirit of power and grace. That he might be identified
at the station by his Austrian friend, Rizal sent in advance a
pencil-sketch he had made of himself, and with this in hand Dr.
Blumentritt knew him instantly. The high opinion the elder scientist
had formed of Rizal’s character and talents must have been justified
upon closer acquaintance; it appears that Rizal spent most of his time
at the Blumentritts’, and Mrs. Blumentritt signified her approbation of
him by cooking for him rare old-time Bohemian dainties, unknown to the
restaurants and hotels. [90] Thence to Vienna, where he became intimate
with Nordenfels, the Austrian novelist, and met other men prominent in
literature and art. Upon all these he seems to have left the uniform
impress of a mind strong, capacious, and candid, and a soul disciplined
and enlightened.
His studies in Vienna completed, he passed into Italy, and in a few
weeks was pondering the antiquities of Rome. Reviewing there his
observations and researches in so many lands, he concluded that the
time had come for him to return to the Philippines. The irregularity of
his passport by which he had escaped from Manila he had since
corrected; legally, he was as free as any one else to travel in the
Islands. His objective had been won; he had made good use of his time.
He might even have congratulated himself on the diligence of his
service. Consecration and an almost prodigious industry had made him
one of the foremost scholars of the day; he must now put to use the
resources he had gathered for the chief purpose of aiding his people.
If we knew more about his disastrous romance we might possibly find
that Leonora’s silence had become a motive to draw him home. What we do
know is that he was distressed by the reports he had of his mother’s
failing eyesight and eager to return to her and help her. For months a
double cataract had been growing upon her eyes. He felt sure that he
could remove it and restore her vision: it was to this branch of
optical surgery that he had given most heed. From Rome he sped to
Marseilles, took steamer on July 3, 1887, for Saigon, and transhipped
for Manila. On August 5, after five years of wanderings and so many
triumphs, he saw once more the green tide of the Pasig.
As soon as he landed he hastened to his mother at Calamba and, laying
aside every other business, devoted himself to the care of her eyes.
With entire success he performed the operation he had intended, the
first of the kind ever done in the Philippines. The fame of Mrs.
Mercado’s healing speedily went throughout all the Islands and beyond.
In the opinion of most persons of that day and region it meant that, by
a miracle as of old, sight had been restored to the blind; and, at a
word, Rizal stepped into eminence and a great practice. Of this he was
not unworthy. As we shall have occasion to see later, he was well aware
of his skill and learning; and, so far as the Orient was concerned, he
eclipsed all previous practitioners. Patients came to him with
confidence from all parts of the Philippines and even from China.
He had time to renew some of his old friendships, notably with Fernando
Canon, who had been fellow-student with him in old Spain and later one
of the most effective agents in getting “Noli Me Tangere” into the
Islands, whither he had lately returned. Some of the boxes that
contained copies of the book had been passed in as Mr. Canon’s stores.
One day, walking up and down with him at Calamba, Rizal revealed how
nearly the world had come to the loss of this work:
“I did not believe ‘Noli Me Tangere’ would ever be published. I was in
Berlin, heartbroken with sadness [91] and weakened and discouraged from
hunger and deprivation. I was on the point of throwing my work into the
fire as a thing accursed and fit only to die. And then came the
telegram from Viola. It revived me; it gave me new hope. I went to the
station to receive him and spoke to him about my work. He said he might
be able to help me. I reflected and then decided to shorten the book
and eliminated whole chapters. So he found it much more concise than it
had been. This accounts for the loose pages of manuscript to which you
have referred. But these will have a place in the continuation.
“I will publish seven volumes about Philippine conditions. Then if I do
not succeed in awakening my countrymen, I will shoot myself.” [92]
To his account of this incident Mr. Canon adds:
“Still there vibrates in my ears the inflections of his voice as he
said this. One could recognize Rizal anywhere by the tones of his
voice.”
In the midst of his busy employments, there fell upon him, early in
1888, a summons to Manila to appear before Governor-General Terrero.
This ominous message was the first repercussion from “Noli Me Tangere”;
the classes affronted in that book and burning for revenge were moving
to secure it. Here between the claws of their System was the man they
hated; it would go hard if he escaped where so many lesser men had
perished. With what feelings he obeyed the summons he has not told us,
but there can be hardly a doubt that he knew by whose manœuvers he was
now in the toils. It is the most singular fact in his whole strange
career that he never betrayed the least concern as to what should
become of him and throughout whatsoever process might be instituted
against him behaved as if it were the trial of another person of which
he was only the moderately interested witness. It was so now. With
unruffled self-possession he passed before the governor-general.
Terrero told him bluntly of the report of the committee appointed to
examine “Noli Me Tangere.” Rizal observed that the examination must
have been faulty, for the book was not what the committee had called it
but innocent. He made so able a defense that Terrero said finally that
as for himself he had read no more of it than the extracts the
committee had cited in its report, but now he should like to read it
all and judge for himself, and asked for a copy of it. This modest
request being (despite all fierce decrees) complied with, the
governor-general hemmed a little and said he feared that great enmity
had been aroused against Rizal among the classes he had described. It
was enmity that might even go so far as to attempt the author’s life.
For his safety, therefore, it had been deemed wise to assign to him a
body-guard so long as he should remain in the Islands.
Of this labored device Rizal might have said that it was but glass, and
the very sun shone through it. Henceforth every movement he made was to
be watched and reported, and here was the spy provided by the
Government, clumsy-clever, as usual, and forcible-feeble. [93]
Yet even this incident, as things fell out, was to contribute something
to his fame and little joy to his enemies. The body-guard assigned to
him was a young Spaniard, Lieutenant José de Andrade, born into the
governing class and fulfilled with all Spanish prejudices. Although his
associates were of the type that Rizal had so mercilessly pilloried, so
that in “Noli Me Tangere” he could hardly fail to recognize portraits
of intimate friends, Lieutenant de Andrade could not more than other
men withstand the singularly magnetic charm of this unusual
personality. [94] From his initial status as official spy and
watch-dog, he became Rizal’s devoted friend. Together they took long
walking trips into the country, climbed mountains, compared notes and
experiences, and recited verses. It is to be supposed that the
lieutenant returned the reports he was assigned to make, but reasonably
certain that they contained no matter that gratified the hatred of the
reactionary element.
We have noted what frenzy of consternation seized upon that element at
the lightest whisper of revolt among the oppressed people. It was one
of the invariable characteristics of the Spanish domination, an
intermittent fever under the empire of which all reason or semblance of
reason went to the winds and men outside the asylums acted like raving
maniacs. Such manifestations of this strange psychology (only to be
explained by recalling the Spaniard’s total misunderstanding of the
Filipino nature) as followed the uprising of 1872 were still remembered
by oppressor and oppressed. It was now revived for both as knowledge
spread of this strange and powerful book. Besides the unendurable smart
of its lash, the governing class saw in it consequences of the gravest
import. It was standing and irrefutable evidence that the contempt for
the native upon which Spanish rule proceeded was baseless; a native had
created literature of the highest order. Still more alarming, it
threatened to lead the way, to offer the example, to pioneer ceaseless
ambuscades of the same kind, to show that the thing superstitiously
held to be above all attack could be attacked safely and even with
ridicule and this deadly laughter. If the author of “Noli Me Tangere”
should escape without punishment, imitators might be expected on every
side. Any native anywhere might take up similar weapons; hence, the
white man’s supremacy in all the East was in jeopardy.
It is not easy for the Occidental mind to grasp the power this
suggestion has upon men charged with the holding in subjection of vast
Asiatic populations; but it is to such men always the first
consideration. It must be, in fact; because their situation is so
abnormal that in times of cool reflection they must wonder at
themselves. With bands of soldiers insignificant in numbers they are
required to impose upon millions a sovereignty that the millions
generally loathe. Diligently, then, they must support the fiction of
the white man’s superiority, support it day and night without ceasing
and be not too finical about means or manner. Doubtless, to many the
task soon becomes congenial, so easily is race hatred bred in places
out of the observation of Europe, and so strong is the addiction to it
in some hearts not yet well removed from the stone age. Yet there have
often appeared in these grimy scenes Europeans that instinctively hated
the business and knew well enough that at bottom the real reason for
dominating these subject peoples was dirty profits dirtily obtained.
[95] But these very men, again and again, by the clamors about them and
by the panic nature of the fears of what the aroused brown millions
might do, have been swept despite themselves into acts at which their
better natures revolted.
Governor-General Terrero was of this order, and even above its average.
He was willing at the instigation of angry friars to assign a spy to
watch Rizal but was determined to avoid the silly and stupid crime of
shooting or garroting or even exiling a man whose offense was that he
had written a novel some persons did not like. In other days and other
administrations men had been shot or garroted or exiled on charges as
flimsy, but light was breaking in Spain; even in the face of tradition
and old frowning privilege, light was breaking. The first rift in the
medieval eclipse was driven by the sword of Napoleon. Slowly ever since
it has been widening to echoes of the world’s advance elsewhere. In
1888 the governing class in Spain had become aware of the scorn of that
world and began to feel a little the sting of it. Not much, then, nor
since, as we are to see in this narrative, and might illustrate by
other citations. Lo, it was this same Spain, and so late as 1909, that
murdered Francisco Ferrer, the most learned man in her dominions, for
but teaching her children in the manner of other nations—nations so far
in the front of her that, looking back, they could scarce descry the
dust of her sluggard footsteps!
Terrero, at least, was not indifferent to the verdict of enlightened
mankind; yet the pressure upon him to take some action against this
atrocious leveler and dangerous character was greater than he could
withstand. It came from the power that made or broke governor-generals,
the power of the orders, supreme in the Islands, supreme in Spain on
any matter that related to the Islands. By the beginning of 1888 their
demand had reached a point where he must compromise with it, and he
“advised” Rizal to leave the Philippines at once. The word is equivocal
and was meant so to be; the real significance of “advice” in this
instance was an unofficial order of deportation. [96]
Rizal obeyed, but not until he had given to the world new evidence of
the versatility of a genius to which there is scarcely a companion in
human records. We are to remember, first of all, he was a physician
that had chosen diseases of the eye for his specialty, wherein he stood
in a place of distinction before his profession. He was next an artist
in sculpture and painting; a poet; a master of terse and nervous prose
in Spanish, in his native Tagalog, and in ten other languages. He was
next a scientist, distinguished in original research, already honored
with the regard of leading European minds in many branches of recondite
knowledge. This, it will be admitted, is a most unusual range of
pursuits. From them economics might be regarded as far removed and
negligible. Yet he now showed that his many-sided mind could enlist its
energies in even the “dismal science” and his skill in expression could
illuminate it.
Taxes in the Philippines had always been haphazard. They were levied
without system or anything akin to system. Only one feature about them
could be said to be uniform: everywhere the wealthy evaded their just
share of the taxation burden; everywhere the poor bore more than was
right for them to bear. The history of Spanish rule was a succession of
promises of reform, usually wrenched by an insurrection from the
unwilling lips of a governor-general and ignored when the time of
danger had passed. In the year of grace 1888 came such a reformatory
spasm about taxes. When it reached Calamba it was received with
exceptional interest for the reason that the Dominicans, with whom the
householders had an ancient feud, owned a great deal of property there
and on it paid very little.
This, though outside of Rizal’s studies, was a subject all within the
purpose to which he had consecrated himself. He was to live for his
people; he was to do whatever came to his hand to help them to rise.
Here was a poignant illustration of the vast and complicated evils that
weighed them down. Since his first interview with Terrero he had been
living at Calamba in his mother’s house, practising with brilliant
success his profession and lending his influence to every project that
seemed to promise good for the Filipinos. His prestige and influence
had become great. Despite all the efforts of the Government, knowledge
of his book and of its meaning was wide-spread. Copies were continually
being smuggled into the country and passed from hand to hand. Often at
the approach of officers they were buried in fields or rubbish-heaps
and dug up again when the danger was gone. A Filipino that could read
was a popular man, then, in his community; he found much employment
reading “Noli Me Tangere” to groups that cowered in the brush, maybe, a
sentinel posted to give warning of the approach of the Civil Guard. The
result of all this could be but one thing. From the mass of the
despised Filipinos he was emerging as their natural leader.
He observed now the approach of the taxation issue and, one might say,
went forth to meet it. His facile and powerful mind absorbed the whole
business. Taxation he studied until he seemed to know more about it
than any other man in the Islands. In the manner of the true modern
investigator, he sought for facts, not arguments: what the poor man
paid upon his small holding, what the rich owner paid upon his great
estate. When these had been gathered, he reduced them all to a report
that the overburdened taxpayers took for their own and presented to the
Government impressively signed by their local officers. [97]
He had done more here, very likely, than he himself knew. The document
thus prepared became the rallying-point for another of those struggles
between the people and the Government that increasingly signaled the
downfall of the existing System. Slowly the nineteenth century was
closing in upon the sixteenth, democracy upon the autocracy that at the
borders of civilization still outlived the date of its normal demise.
Rizal’s work on taxation showed the Filipinos what they could do by
uniting their efforts. In their country, too, the exploiter held the
exploited by fomenting among them envyings, jealousies, and caste; a
process that everywhere attends (and usually comprises) the white man’s
burden, and whereof India offers the chief surviving example. In the
face of every obstacle and discouragement the Filipinos were now
learning the lesson of union, and the only shadow union cast forward
was revolt.
Rizal’s leadership was a phrase we used in a foregoing paragraph. It is
to be noted that he came into that eminence without an effort of his
own, without planning or connivance. He was elated to find greatness
thus thrust upon him and would not have been human otherwise; yet to be
conspicuous had never been any real part of his scheme of life, and
when elation was at its height it never obscured the fact that what he
really sought was a result for the country and not kudos for himself.
But he was the most famous of living Filipinos; knowledge of his place
among the world’s scientists was now general among his countrymen;
those that had not been able to read “Noli Me Tangere” nor to hear it
read were becoming aware by common report of the nature of its protest.
He was the one man that had been able to make the bitter cry of the
Filipinos audible to the world. He had best formulated and expressed
the wrongs under which those people suffered. He alone, with this
fierce derision, had dared to defy the power of the friars and the
brutal fists of the Civil Guards. Naturally, the people turned to him,
and the unanimity with which they sought his counsel might have shown
the Spaniards again among what fires they were walking; for the spirit
that gave rise to the popularity of Rizal was even more significant
than anything he said in his book. Before that book was written the
spirit had been there; it was growing while the friars debated the best
means to suppress the audacious author; it was certain to break out
into open revolt—if not under Rizal, then under some one else.
In view of these conditions, Rizal has been subjected to some criticism
for obeying the sugar-coated deportation-order of the governor-general
and taking himself from the Islands at a time so momentous. The
criticism is not now important but, to keep straight the thread of
narrative, may be examined here. To say nothing of the obvious fact
that, as the power of the governor-general was absolute, hesitation to
obey would be followed by an explicit command, other things were to be
considered. All Rizal’s instincts strove against the idea of advance by
physical violence. He believed in the weapons of the spirit, not in the
carnal sword. To defy the governor-general’s “advice” meant but one
thing. It would be a direct appeal to physical force; it would be
followed by revolution and slaughter; and to these he felt he could
never consent.
Moreover, he was up to this time not in favor of immediate separation
from Spain. On this issue his views have been distorted by
controversialists that have selected expressions seemingly favorable to
one side or the other of a disputed question. Long after events had
wholly changed the face and the substance of Philippine affairs it was
the custom of persons opposed to Philippine independence to cite Rizal
in support of their arguments. This was unfairly done. Reference to one
undeniable fact should be enough to dispose of the fabricated
uncertainty about his views on this question. All the reforms he strove
for looked to independence and could not look to anything else. It was
not for academic satisfaction he desired increase of culture among his
people, but that with wisdom and confidence they might take their place
among the nations of earth. It was not for the mere sake of teaching
that he desired to see them taught, but that they might be taught to be
free.
When we recognize this basis, which shows plainly enough in his
writings, [98] his attitude toward Spain, otherwise mysterious or
contradictory, is consistent enough to suit any taste. He wished Spain
to grant reforms, to adopt a system of education that would meet some,
at least, of the urgent needs of the people, to unchain the press, to
remake the grotesque courts, to recognize the people of the Islands as
human beings, and to give them something to live for. The effect of
these changes, he well knew, would be to release the Filipino mind, and
when that should be set free the result could be only one thing. It was
darkness and ignorance that enabled Spain to rule; the symbols of all
her power were of the night. But he thought the reforms that would
allow the Filipino to stand upright before the world Spain itself must
grant; to try to wrest them from her, gun in hand, would be to miss
them altogether. Spain must grant them. True, she would thereby be
lighting her own eventual exit from the Islands, but he was able to
make himself believe (for a time) that the Spanish Government could be
persuaded, or led by events, to do this thing. This was a lovely dream
and possible only to one of faith larger than the average man’s in the
innate strength of a cause just and reasonable. It was not really in
him inconsistent that all this time he was under no illusion about the
bespattered record and reactionary tendencies of the controlling power
in Spain; what he thought, apparently, was that by bringing home to
that power a sense of the world’s contempt and urging the need of
sweeping reforms such agitation would generate its own compulsive and
undeniable force. He is not the only man in history in whom the sense
of justice was so strong it obscured its total want in others.
But even so, in a way, what confronted him and the Philippines at the
moment was beyond choosing. The immediate demand must be for the
reforms that lay in Spain’s power to give or to withhold; these were
imperative; that a start may be made upon the road, let us unite and
demand these first reforms.
There can be no manner of doubt that these were the ideas that
controlled him when Terrero “advised” him to depart, and none that in
the next few years his views on these subjects contracted as he looked
more searchingly upon the troglodyte methods of the Spanish rulers. He
was the less reluctant to leave the Philippines because his private
life, apart from his career of service, had been darkened by the
catastrophe of his love-affair; he had come home to find Leonora
married. Two other impulses concurred to urge him away. The success of
“Noli Me Tangere” (despite so many and powerful measures taken to
suppress the book) and the manifest effect of it upon the Filipino mind
must have strongly reminded him of that sequel he had vaguely intended
when he completed the last chapters of his novel. He could not hope to
accomplish any such work at home; he could not hope, even if he should
write it there, to find a publisher for it in the Islands nor to
smuggle out the manuscript. To write it he must be abroad. Next, he had
seen much of Europe but nothing of that American Republic about which
Jagor’s prophecy had so inflamed his youthful mind. Here, by Jagor’s
logic, was the power destined some day to transform all the regions
bordering upon the Pacific, and he had never seen it. This was also the
country whose history and spirit he had glimpsed in the “Lives of the
Presidents” that he so eagerly read and returned to. In that country
farmers’ boys, canal-boat drivers, tailors’ apprentices,
rail-splitters, journeyman printers, any son of the plain people could
rise to any place, even the highest. It was a country that
conspicuously had won to freedom and independence out of a gross
tyranny. Therefore, it had a peculiar claim to his attention. As he
must go somewhere, he planned to return to Europe by way of the United
States.
He was relieved of all anxiety about his mother. The eyesight of her
youth had been restored to her.
This time there was no difficulty about his passport and no need that
he should, like an escaping criminal, steal at night from the city. The
responsible powers were but too glad to have him go. He sailed from
Manila on February 28, 1888, going first to Hong-Kong. There and in the
neighboring city of Macao he visited and talked with many refugees and
exiles of 1872, annus hystericus in Philippine history. By deportation
or flight that year the islands had lost hundreds of their best minds
and ablest servitors. That many of these were afterward proved to have
had nothing to do with the uprising for which they were banished or
hunted is superfluous evidence of the mad psychology of the time. In
most of these cases there were no trials, no investigations, no
queries. Some one frenzied with fear imagined the man across the street
to be behaving in a way that indicated conspiracy; to the Ladrones with
him! Some one else saw two men in the street salute each other with
suspicious gravity; the next morning both were on their way to the
Carolines. [99] The Herrara family had maintained a back yard quarrel
with the Venturas. Mr. Ventura was denounced and spent the rest of his
life in loneliness at Macao. It was the Lion’s Mouth and the cachets of
the Bastile, revived for the astonished instruction of the age of
steam. Cases are in the records of men that were seen carrying home
bundles—fish, maybe, or steak. “Bombs!” cried the officers, under the
sway of emotion, and that night haled the unfortunate householder from
his bed. Sometimes the intended victims of these maniacal
manifestations received friendly hints before the blow fell and had
time to flee to the woods, whence they made their way out of the
country, to live, very likely, in the utmost poverty.
Such was the lot, in fact, of most of the men deported. One of them, a
learned lawyer, the ornament of the Philippine bar, as innocent of the
conspiracy as the premier of Spain himself, was twenty years later
picking up the crumbs of a living by trying to practise a little
Spanish law in London. [100]
It is to be assumed that conversation with such men did nothing to
soften Rizal’s spirit or to cool his ardor of service. They were the
living monuments to the hopeless incapacity of the existing System to
govern or to advance. From his days and nights in their company he
passed to Japan, where in the space of one month he achieved the almost
incredible feat of mastering the Japanese language. But for the
testimony of the facts the hardiest biographer would scarce dare the
assertion. Rizal came to Japan with scarce a word of Japanese; he
remained but one month; before he departed he was speaking it so well
that the natives thought he was a countryman of theirs, and he was
acting as their interpreter. Thereafter he could speak and write
Japanese as readily as English or German.
At Hong-Kong he had been somewhat surprised to find himself invited to
the Spanish consulate and urged to abide there. [101] At Tokio this
experience was repeated, the Spanish legation offering him its
hospitality and even suggesting employment as a translator. The
purposes of these advances were clear enough. He was one that the
Government willed, after its custom, to have always under surveillance;
to have him beneath a legation roof was easier and cheaper than to hire
secret service men.
From Yokohama he sailed for San Francisco, astonishing his
fellow-travelers by conversing with all the aliens in their own
tongues, whatever these might be. Among them was a Japanese that knew
not a word of English. Rizal attached himself to this unfortunate and
acted as his interpreter all the way to London.
When he landed at San Francisco, April 28, 1888, his first experiences
under the American flag were hardly calculated to swell his enthusiasm
for the republic. It happened to be a time when a terror of epidemics
was afoot, and he might have reminded himself from what he saw that
sporadic hysteria is not the exclusive possession of the Spaniards nor
of anybody else. What a whisper of insurrection meant to a Spanish
government officer in Manila, a vision of a cholera-germ might signify
to a health-officer in America. The health authorities of San Francisco
were then busily quarantining everything that came into the port. To
them the fact that Rizal’s steamer carried a clean bill of health meant
nothing, nor that she had been properly inspected and cleared at
Yokohama, nor that no disease had developed among her people on the way
over. Who knew what horrent microbes might be lurking in her woodwork
or snugging in the coal-hole? Therefore, authority decreed to hold her
day after day in quarantine while the passengers chafed and fidgeted
and the British among them complained to their consul and threatened an
international scandal. [102]
Rizal seems to have endured the affliction with his customary
philosophy. From the deck he made sketches of the new country that thus
slammed its doors in his face—among them a reproduction of the revenue
flag, with its eagle and perpendicular bars, which he thought was a
novel and taking design. He did not fail to observe, however, that
while the human beings on the steamer were rigidly quarantined the
cargo was unloaded, and he wondered how infection could be carried by
the passengers and not by the freight. When he was released, he went to
the old Palace Hotel in San Francisco and spent several days observing
the strange life of the city. Thence, by train over the mountains,
noting with astonishment how great an area of the country through which
he passed was uninhabited, and apparently being rather entertained than
enraged by the horrors of the American sleeping-car. Two things of much
greater moment impressed him sadly. One was the race prejudice against
the Chinese in San Francisco (then at its height), and the other the
race prejudice against the Negro, manifested in some other parts of the
country.
Afterward he wrote this summary of his swallow flight across the
continent:
I visited the larger cities of America. They have splendid
buildings and magnificent ideals. America is a home-land for the
poor that are willing to work. I traveled across America, and saw
the majestic cascade of Niagara. I was in New York, the great city,
but there everything is new. I went to see some relics of
Washington, that great man who, I fear, has not his equal in this
century.
From Albany he had gone forward by the Hudson River, and was greatly
impressed with its magnificent scenery, but thought that, in the way of
commerce alone, the Pasig was busier. From New York he sailed on the
steamer City of Rome, then esteemed a maritime masterpiece, and reached
London, where he found lodgings with the organist of St. Paul’s
Cathedral and settled himself for a season of work and study.
Part of this work became afterward an invaluable legacy to his
countrymen and literature. In his youth he had heard of a wonderful
book, of which only two or three copies existed in all the world, a
book written in 1607 [103] about the Philippine Islands and their
people as they were then. A blunt, honest old Spaniard, Antonio de
Morga, had written it, apparently with no purpose except to tell the
truth, an impulse that in itself for his times was enough to confer
distinction. Other Spanish writers of that day had written to create
desired impressions, to justify theories or to excuse the Spanish
aggression, whereby the lies had dripped like oil from their pens. De
Morga had as good a chance as anybody else to know the Islands; he had
accompanied one of the earliest of the Spanish expeditions and for
seven years had been a part of its exploits. One of the few copies of
his book, “Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas,” was in the British Museum.
Rizal formed the ambitious design to rescue it from oblivion and
republish it, annotated and clarified.
With some difficulty he ran the barrage so strangely erected around
this institution and found the precious volume to be all that had been
said in praise of it. De Morga’s observations, evidently unbiased,
established what Rizal had long surmised and then asserted, that the
Filipinos had been historically wronged. The sea-coast folk, at least,
the bulk of the nation, had not been more truly savages when Magellan
came than the Spaniards themselves. From de Morga’s accounts it was
easy to show that the Filipino’s spirit, activities, and general
welfare had been in no way bettered by Spanish rule. Arts, industries,
products in the Islands, and even energy, seemed to have been more
observable among the people in de Morga’s day than at the close of the
nineteenth century.
This was a matter of grave importance to the Islanders and so remained
long after Rizal’s labors had ceased. The Spanish excused to the world
their presence and their cruelties alike on the one ground that the
Indio was a savage. Suppose him without European restraint and European
inspiration, they said; he would revert to his caves, his raw meat, and
his bows and arrows. To learn that he was heir to these centuries of
dignity and worth was not only disconcerting but raised a question to
which there was no answer. If he was as civilized as the Spaniard, why
had he not the Spaniard’s right to be free?
De Morga described at length the arts and industries that flourished in
the Philippines long before a Spanish flag had fluttered above their
waters; the excellence in weaving, in metalwork, agriculture,
government, domestic arts, commerce, navigation; how the natives lived
and worked, what good ships they built, what busy marts they had
erected. [104] On this Rizal’s observations are shrewd and witty, but
he sometimes allowed his joy over the vindication of his people and of
his own theories about them to sweep him out of that coolly scientific
attitude he usually maintained about such things. For this he may be
forgiven. He was sensitive, he was proud; he had suffered for the
unjust disparagement of his race; he was dealing with evidence that the
Filipino stock was as good as any other, as much entitled to
development in its own way.
While he was making these studies he found relaxation in athletics. He
screwed together some of his regularly apportioned time to get into the
fields and play. He learned to box and to play cricket; he had long
been an expert fencer. [105] At cricket he was so good that it seems a
pity baseball came so late into his country; it is a game that would
have exactly suited his tastes and inclinings. In the combination of
alert mentality and swift physical action that baseball requires must
be something peculiarly attractive to the Filipino, for do but observe
the astonishing records he has made at it, exciting the admiration of
the most experienced judges. Rizal had never forgotten the training in
physical exercise he had received from his uncle; he still loved to
fence, to ride, to run, to take long, swift walks. His faith was all in
the mental health that is fortified by physical well-being; when all
his mental enginery had been working full tilt he found ease in the
open air, in quick motion and the trees and flowers. His body was as
supple as a wrestler’s, and in support of his theories of reciprocal
mental and physical soundness it is to be remarked that in all his life
he seems never to have been seriously ill.
In London he found congenial company in the household of Dr. Antonio
Regidor, a Filipino that had suffered exile in the Cavite frenzy of
1872. Dr. Regidor had three charming daughters. Rizal’s ideas of life
and conduct may be gathered from the fact that when, after a time, he
discovered that one of these young ladies was forming an attachment for
him, instead of being elated he was much troubled in his mind and
concluded that in such circumstances the best thing he could do was to
take himself out of the young lady’s sight. For once the paths of duty
and expediency fell together. By this time he had completed his work at
the museum and he now departed for Paris.
There, Juan Luna, [106] the Filipino painter, with whom Rizal had
formed a close friendship while both were in Madrid, 1882 to 1885, had
now made his home and Rizal seems to have rejoiced to renew his
associations with his talented countryman. It is certain that the
stupidity of race prejudice, which has so many other and blacker wrongs
to answer for, has deprived this man of a certain part of his just
reward. Yet he was a great painter, the winner of prizes in many
European competitions, and an artist that Paris delighted to honor.
[107] A contemporary and fellow Filipino, Hidalgo, was hardly less
successful; so seldom are their achievements counted in any summary of
the Malay that most unjustly America is still unaware of them. Rizal
usually spent his Sundays in Luna’s studio, sometimes fencing,
sometimes talking art, of which he was still, for all his troubles,
distractions, and complex activities, the steadfast worshiper.
CHAPTER VIII
THE GRAPES OF WRATH
Though all this time out of the sight of his enemies in Manila, he
seems never to have been out of their minds; authoritative evidence
that in his novel he had told the truth about them. Theirs was a hatred
not unmixed with reasonable fears of his popularity and of his powerful
pen. They waited until he was at a safe distance before they moved
against him, and then in a way that verified the ancient adage
concerning the union of the essential qualities of bully and coward.
They struck at him through his family, left now without defense.
His sister Lucia was married to Mariano Herbosa, who in Manila had been
Rizal’s dear friend. Herbosa died soon after Rizal’s departure, and his
death gave to the friars an opportunity for a revenge as uncouth and
revolting as far-fetched. On the ground that Herbosa had not received
final absolution before his death, they ordered his body to be dug up
and cast out of the church where it had been buried. [108] To the
family of a sincere Catholic this involved an almost insupportable
grief, an almost maddening wrong. That they might give to their action
the semblance of legality the friars had telegraphed the archbishop at
Manila that Rizal’s brother-in-law had died after neglecting his church
duties and abandoning the confessional. [109] Then they hypocritically
asked what they should do in the case, knowing full well that on such a
presentation only one response was possible. Protests and appeals by
the family won no mitigation of the harsh sentence; they are said to
have been stifled or diverted on the way, so that the archbishop never
saw them; and the wife and children must bear the taunts their
impotence invited as well as the indignity to the memory of husband and
father. It appears that the charges against Herbosa were mere
inventions; he had with fidelity performed all his religious duties.
No one connected even remotely or nominally with the bold delineator of
friar government was safe; through the persecution of his relatives he
himself could be made to suffer. His brother Paciano was now banished
to Mindoro on some blown-up charge of thinking sedition. The pretext
was nothing; anything would serve, from barratry to simony. Another
brother-in-law was still available, Manuel Hidalgo by name. Him the
authorities caught on a charge of sacrilege. A child of his had died of
cholera, and he had buried it without the ceremonies of the church. The
civil law prescribed in cholera cases immediate burial, and the
health-officers demanded it. A poor man in such an emergency might well
have been distracted between conflicting decrees of church and state.
It seems that in other such cases when the head of the family obeyed
the civil precepts he heard nothing of sacrilege. But they were not
brothers-in-law of Rizal. Pounce, came the church upon the wretched
offender. The next thing he knew he was deported. [110]
Next two of Rizal’s sisters fell into the same net. Sedition and
sacrilege were handy offenses. They could be preferred against anybody
for anything.
His father was the next victim. In his case the plain purpose was ruin,
to be achieved by means suggested to ill minds through an out-cropping
of one man’s childish malice. Mr. Mercado raised prize turkeys. The
intendant, or manager, of the Dominican estate, which claimed ownership
in all the land in the region of the Mercado homestead, had a nice
taste in these birds when skilfully cooked, and it was his pleasing
habit to demand from time to time gifts of the choicest of the Mercado
turkeys to adorn his own table. The time came when it was no longer
possible thus to propitiate the petty tyrant; disease had carried off
the firstlings of the flock, and what were left were absolutely needed
to replenish the breed.
From homely incidents like these we see the Philippines as they were
and illuminate again the unforgettable pages of Rizal’s stories. The
intendant made no secret of his purpose to revenge himself; they had at
least the virtue of candor, these little satraps. He conceived that his
immortal dignity had suffered because he had been refused turkeys when
there were no turkeys, and nothing would ease the sting of that burning
wrong but retribution. When the next rent-day came, Mr. Mercado found
that his rent had been doubled. He paid the increase and made no
complaint. The next rent-day he found that again the rate had been
doubled. This likewise he paid without protest. When the next rent-day
came and he found the rate was again increased he made the fatal
blunder of appealing to the courts. [111]
Aggrieved members of the governing class must have joyed to learn of so
excellent an opportunity to salve their hurts, also, in this medicament
of revenge. Here was the father of the hated José Rizal delivered into
their hands. They took the case from the justice of the peace at
Calamba, in whose jurisdiction it rightfully belonged, and sent it
before a judge whose decision they must have felt sure they could
control. There had now become involved in the case a question of
broader moment. Mr. Mercado’s sturdy resistance had heartened the other
tenants to revive the ancient and unsettled issue of the title to the
lands. For many years careful men had held that the Dominicans, who
assumed to own all this region and to collect all rents from it, had no
right to any of it. The select judge before whom came these questions
lost no time in deciding them against Mercado and the other tenants.
Mercado appealed, and thereby precipitated one of the strangest
incidents of the story.
Of a sudden appeared at Calamba a battery of artillery and a company of
soldiers, who ostentatiously took possession of the town as if it had
been in a state of armed revolt. At this the inhabitants blinked and
gasped, for nowhere on earth lay a more peaceable community. They were
not left long in doubt as to what was toward. The commandant of the
troops issued a curt order to Mercado and the other tenants involved in
the litigation to remove within twenty-four hours all their buildings
from the land they had occupied. An appeal was pending, a fact that in
all civilized countries would have been sufficient to stay proceedings
until the appeal could be decided. It was of no such validity here. To
comply with the savage order was physically impossible; there were not
hands enough in Calamba nor in all the country around. At the end of
the next day the agents of the authorities set fire to all the houses,
and among them perished from human sight and treasuring the house where
José Rizal was born. [112]
Across this repulsive story glowers a face permanently evil in history.
The governor-general that connived at these barbarities where he did
not order them was Emiliano Weyler, immortal in the records of Cuba as
“The Butcher,” accused of deeds there so horrible they can never be put
into print, accused in the Philippines of huge peculations as well as
stupid cruelties, a man that seemed to delight in cruelty as other men
delight in kindness. It was he that thought, “in the gloomy recesses of
a mind capacious of such things,” of the expedient of overawing Calamba
and the courts with artillery and martial law upon the heads of the
litigants; it was he that had made the most show of a violent hatred of
Rizal and furnished the proof that the persecution of Francisco Mercado
was revenge upon Francisco Mercado’s son. When Weyler transferred his
rule of blood and iron to Cuba, he left in the official archives
evidence of the real nature of the proceedings. He can have had no
suspicion that he was preparing evidence of his own iniquity to be
given to the world through the nation he most hated. His papers were
still in the archives August 13, 1898, when Manila surrendered to Dewey
and Merritt. Among them was a copy of a letter he had sent at this time
to certain of the friar landlords, expressing his full sympathy with
them and (with a characteristic touch) the pleasure he had in serving
them against the tenantry. [113]
In the spot from which it had been thus evicted the Mercado family had
lived for many years. There could have come upon these kinsfolk of
Rizal no sterner test of their fortitude. Before it they went their way
undaunted. At Los Baños was a small house to which Mr. Mercado had
title. There he led his family to a refuge and continued his fight
against the friars.
Rizal was in London when the news reached him of the petty vengeance
wreaked upon the body of his brother-in-law. There had been launched
some months before by the Filipino colony in Madrid a semimonthly
magazine called “La Solidaridad,” the object of which was to arouse and
unify the Filipinos and wrest reforms from the Spanish Government. With
impunity it could be published in Madrid but could not have lived a day
in Manila, a fact sufficiently indicating the power and value of
publicity. Spain, with the eyes of Europe upon her, did not dare to do
at home the things she did daily in the Philippines; dared not to do
them or dared not to avow them. Distance, creating an impenetrable
screen, created also in effect a transition from the modern to the
antique world. There was much freedom of the press in Spain, a freedom,
as we have remarked, partly sustained by the incessant threat of
rebellion in Barcelona. Therefore, as a singular fact and almost
comically incongruous, “La Solidaridad,” [114] with its acrid criticism
of the Spanish Government, circulated freely in Spain and was not
allowed to enter the Philippines. One of its editors was Marcelo H. del
Pilar, a resolute and restless man, type of the intransigent, the
indomitable and professional revolutionist. Before long he and Rizal
quarreled, [115] for he was all for revolution by physical force and
Rizal was always asserting its futility. A few years later del Pilar
died on his way home to start his long meditated uprising. Untimely was
his death if any man’s ever was. He would have reached the Philippines
to find in full swing a revolution wherein his tireless energies and
fiery spirit would have found an outlet at which men might have
wondered.
But before they quarreled Rizal had written much for del Pilar and “La
Solidaridad;” poems, articles, editorials, all directed toward
Philippine reforms. When he heard of the indignity put for his sake
upon the name and clay of Herbosa, he took up his pen and poured out
for his journal an account of the incident and his feelings about it
that scalded the church authorities with a flood of the short, hot
sentences he knew so well how to write—scoriæ and hot lava from the
volcano. When the news of the attack upon his father came he was living
in Ghent, whither he had retired to write his new novel “El
Filibusterismo.” The effect upon him of the persecution of his family
is to be observed in the work he was doing at the time; in one place he
makes direct reference to it. He has been telling the story of Cabesang
Tales, a peaceful Filipino farmer, driven to brigandage by the
extortions of the friars and the savageries of the Civil Guards. Then
he says, with mingled rage and sarcasm:
Calm yourselves, peaceful inhabitants of Calamba! None of you is
named Tales, none of you has committed any crime.... You cleared
your fields, on them you have spent the labor of your whole lives,
your savings, your vigils and privations, and you have been
despoiled of them, driven from your homes, with the rest forbidden
to show you hospitality! Not content with outraging justice, they
have trampled upon the sacred altars of your country! You have
served Spain and the king, and when in their name you have asked
for justice you were banished without trial, torn from your wives’
arms and your children’s caresses! Any one of you has suffered more
than Cabesang Tales, and yet not one of you has received justice.
Neither pity nor humanity has been shown to you—you have been
persecuted even beyond the tomb, as was Mariano Herbosa. Weep, or
laugh, there in those lonely isles, where you wander vaguely,
uncertain of the future! Spain, the generous Spain, is watching
over you and soon or late, you will have justice! [116]
It is the bitter sarcasm of a soul stung beyond endurance with the
sense of great wrong.
As a work of fictional art, “El Filibusterismo” is not equal to “Noli
Me Tangere.” It is likely that Rizal knew this and as likely that he
cared not, having now another purpose than to tell a story powerfully.
He is working with rather less of a connected story and rather less of
the clear dramatic prevision. The fates of such characters as he left
unrelated in “Noli Me Tangere” he follows to the end, but on the way
stops to picture lives and conditions not vitally interwoven with the
climacteric. Yet in one way this book is the superior in interest, for
it reveals the change that had been coming over him in these two years.
Slowly there had been erased in his creed the belief in the good
intentions of Spain; slowly (and reluctantly, no doubt) he had come to
face the thought that to appeal to Spain for reforms was useless and
the Filipinos must achieve by their own efforts the changes that would
lead to their redemption. That these efforts must be of a peaceful
character was a sheet-anchor of faith to which he still clung, or tried
to cling, and yet there is evidence that he felt it dragging as more
and more the hopeless stupidity of Spain was revealed to him. [117]
Evidence of the change in his essential point of view may be found even
in the dedication of the new book. It is boldly and uncompromisingly to
the men that, perishing on Bagumbayan Field, in 1872, the gored victims
of the System, made their names immortal.
To the memory of the priests [it reads], Don Mariano Gomez (85
years old), Don José Burgos (30 years old), and Don Jacinto Zamora
(35 years old), executed in Bagumbayan Field, February 28, 1872.
The church, by refusing to degrade you, has placed in doubt the
crime that has been imputed to you; the Government, by surrounding
your trials with mystery and shadows, causes the belief that there
was some error, committed in fatal moments; and all the
Philippines, by worshiping your memory and calling you martyrs, in
no sense recognizes your culpability. In so far, therefore, as your
complicity in the Cavite mutiny is not clearly proved, as you may
or may not have been patriots, and as you may or may not have
cherished sentiments for justice and for liberty, I have the right
to dedicate my work to you as victims of the evil that I undertake
to combat. And while we await expectantly under Spain some day to
restore your good name and cease to be answerable for your death,
let these pages serve as a tardy wreath of dried leaves over your
unknown tombs, and let it be understood that every one that without
clear proof attacks your memory, stains his hands in your blood!
Here is a foretaste of the strange, new, and passionate bitterness that
was coming upon him, not heretofore discernible in his writings nor in
his life, the nettle smart of a growing disillusion. Something there
is, too, that in another man would surely savor of cynicism. “You may
or may not have been patriots,” “You may or may not have cherished
sentiments for justice and for liberty,” are phrases not of a piece
with his old-time faith. The wormwood that flavors these few lines is
perceptible throughout the book. In “Noli Me Tangere” the stern
arraignment of the friars and the Spanish officers is modulated with
many good-natured pictures of Philippine life, with descriptions of the
beautiful Philippine country-side, and with gentle fun-making of
popular follies. In the sequel [118] there are no relieving touches. It
is hot metal always overflowing and burning whatever it touches.
CHAPTER IX
PHILIPPINE INDEPENDENCE
Sixteen years after Jagor printed his almost unheeded prophecy, other
men less gifted might have seen that his views on Philippine evolution
were soundly based. The conditions existing in the Islands could not
last much longer. Six or seven discontented millions could not continue
to be overawed with soldiery and great guns and managed upon a plan
they hated. No matter how assiduously they might be kept from all
weapons more deadly than jack-knives and toothpicks, the existing state
could not endure. The mere physical fact of the United States, forging
ahead upon a totally different principle, would be an influence that
soon or late would overturn these sagging bulwarks of antiquity. What
was to be the future of the Islands? For a long time the students of
Barcelona tried to settle this question, sometimes with debate and
sometimes with vociferation. Thence with similar futility it spread to
Madrid and elsewhere, and finally Rizal took it up in a series of
articles entitled “The Philippines a Century Hence.” [119]
What he thought about Philippine independence he here set down as
plainly as the law and the Spanish Government would allow. That any one
should try to muddle his views on this subject is strange enough when
he left thus a testament reasonably explicit in its text and still more
in its deductions. Although much latitude was allowed to public
discussion in the Spain of that day, plotting to overthrow Spanish rule
in the Philippines was still sedition, and under that term the police
sometimes included much that was extraneous—in Spain, as elsewhere.
Rizal had no fear for himself on this occasion nor any other, but one
can easily understand that he wished to save “La Solidaridad” from the
ash-can. Hence with admirable skill he steers as close as he can to the
forbidden line and yet escapes it.
Against one bugaboo of the timid, and even to this day a favorite
device of the crafty, he brought to bear a destructive logic. It was
urged that if the Philippines were free they would instantly be snapped
up by some powerful and greedy neighbor. The functions of a shield
against these ravenous wild beasts, a function later supposed to be
performed unselfishly by the United States, was then imagined to fall
to the lot of mighty Spain. But for her frowning guns and men-of-war,
behold the Philippines a breakfast any morning for Japan or for Great
Britain! In those days there were a few Filipinos that were impressed
with these fantasies, or said to be; in later times the superior white
man often seemed strangely infected with them. To one inclined to take
them seriously Rizal’s words might have been commended then, or may be
now.
It appears that he had been applying to his country the lessons of the
American Revolution.
If the Philippines [he says] succeed in winning their independence
at the close of a heroic and bitterly contested war, their people
can rest assured that neither England, Germany, France, nor Holland
will dare to pick up the territory that Spain could not retain.
Within a few years, Africa will absorb all the attention of the
great European nations, and none of them would neglect the immense
territories and opportunities that will open in the Dark Continent
for the sake of a handful of rugged islands at the other end of the
world.
As to England, she has already enough of colonies in the Orient, and
she is too wise to imperil her equilibrium by adding more. She does not
wish to run the risk of losing her great empire in India for the sake
of the comparatively poorer Philippine Archipelago. If England had even
thought of taking the Philippines, she would never have retired from
Manila after she had captured it in 1763; she would have retained that
great vantage-point and so would have spread her power from Island to
Island until all should be hers. For her the game was not worth the
candle, and is not. Singapore, Hong-Kong, Shanghai, mean much more to
British trade and the empire than the Philippines could ever mean, and
she has no idea of risking these great possessions for the sake of a
domain so dubious and restless as these Islands. For all reasons of
common sense and commercial advantage, England would look with favor
upon a state of independence that would open the Philippine ports to
British trade.
There is, besides, in England a feeling always growing that the country
has gone too far in imperialism and expansion, that the colonies have
already begun to weaken the mother-country and there must be no
additions to them.
He proceeds next to discuss the probable policies of Germany, China,
Holland, Japan, and the United States toward Philippine independence.
None of them, in his view, would feel any temptation to interfere with
it or to seize the Islands for itself. But, in any event, he says:
The Philippines would defend with the utmost ardor and courage the
liberty bought with so much blood and sacrifice. A new man will
spring from the Philippine bosom; with new energy he will dedicate
himself to progress; he will labor with all his resources to
strengthen his country at home and abroad. Gold will be dug from
the Philippine soil; copper, lead, coal, and other minerals will be
developed. The country will revive the maritime and mercantile
activities to which the Islanders are especially adapted by nature,
instincts, and aptitude. Filipinas will recover those good
qualities that she had centuries ago and has since been losing.
[120] Easily, then, we can see her once more a lover of peace, a
home of justice, and as of old merry, smiling, hospitable,
audacious.
He recounts then some of the existing evils in his country and inquires
what, if one can imagine another century of such servitude, the
Philippines will be reduced to in that time? But without circumlocution
he warns the Government that the servitude cannot possibly continue.
Unless the prudence of the Government provides remedies that are real,
the grievances now accumulating will have but one result.
This is not the time to forecast the probable outcome of such a
struggle if, most deplorably, it should come. It would depend upon
faith, zeal, the qualities of weapons, and a million conditions
that men cannot foresee. But one thing is certain. Suppose all the
advantages to be upon the side of the Government. Suppose the
Government to win an ostensible victory. It would be a victory as
disastrous as a defeat, and this simple fact the Government should
be wise enough to see.
If those that seek to guide the destinies of the Philippines could
be so obstinate as to insist upon holding the country in darkness
instead of relieving it with adequate reforms, the people would
brave the chances of revolt and prefer revolt’s hazards, whatever
they might be, to the certainty of the misery and wrong in which
they would be dwelling. What would they lose in such a fight? To
normal men the choice between long-drawn-out oppression and a
glorious death is no choice at all. Such men will always leap at
the chance of such a death and by their fervor and desperate
courage go far in any such conflict to make up for a disparity in
numbers.
He points out the fact that so far in Philippine history the revolts
have been sporadic and largely local. Earnestly he warns the Government
that this cannot continue. Very different would be the uprising of the
whole people against a state of unendurable misery, and toward such an
uprising the policy of the Government is driving. It is to be
remembered, he says, that factors in the problem exist now that never
existed before. First, the native spirit has awakened and common
misfortune is drawing together all the children of the Islands. Second,
the growth of intelligence at home and abroad is fatal to the existing
order. All those Filipinos that the cruelty and stupidity of the
Government have driven abroad have learned there the rhythm of the
march of mankind and are transmitting it home. It is a class that
rapidly increases. If it is the brain of the country now, it will in a
few years be the country’s nervous system, and of impact upon those
nerves let the Government beware.
One of two things, he concludes, is certain. Spain will grant sweeping
reforms in the islands, establishing there the liberties and advantages
that all civilized people view as birthrights. Or the islands will
declare their independence, after staining themselves and Spain with
blood. To check the advance of the Filipinos to this crisis Spain has
in effect but three weapons. First, the brutalizing effect upon the
masses of a caste system; the high caste, as always, alined with the
Government. Second, the supremacy of a theocratic class in the
Philippine structure, acting to overawe the natives, as in the Dutch
colonies the aristocratic class frightens them. Or, third, the
impoverishment of the country, the encouragement of tribal discord, and
the gradual destruction of the inhabitants.
Already these expedients have been tried enough to prove them worthless
for Spain’s ultimate use.
One little fact that he points out might well be remembered by all
imperialists. Where the aborigines of a seized country, as in
Australia, succumb and disappear before the alien civilization, that
makes one situation for the invader. Where the inhabitants, as in the
Philippines, adapt themselves to the invader’s civilization, show they
can maintain themselves under it, increase in numbers and in
restlessness, bettering the instruction they receive, the situation for
the alien sovereignty is different and not wholesome.
Still his hope clung to peaceful agitation as the means of improvement.
Retana says that Rizal was one that abhorred violent revolution in his
mind and desired it in his heart.
This might easily be. At the time Rizal was studying abroad, many
cities such as London, Paris, Hong-Kong, Macao, as well as Madrid,
contained small colonies of Filipinos, being chiefly the exiles of 1872
and Cavite. Among them it was customary to circulate pamphlets
breathing out destruction to Spanish rule in the Philippines, and so
on. These the authors were usually wise enough not to sign, the chief
purpose of their labors being, apparently, not so much to launch
expeditions for the overthrow of the citadel of oppression as to cheer
the hearts of exile with verbal fireworks. One of these came out in
March, 1889, in Hong-Kong, but widely circulated wherever there were
Filipinos. It is a race that, like the others, has good men and bad,
men that go erect and those that crawl. One of the latter species, a
creature of Weyler of the Red Hands, was then living in Hong-Kong and
felt called upon to answer the inflammatory appeals of his countrymen.
Perhaps he was not much of a Filipino; perhaps he was, in the bulk,
Spaniard. At least he said in his document that Spain’s rule in the
Philippines was the grandest specimen of colonial wisdom ever known and
replete with good things for the people. As to the friars, he said that
no possible objection existed to them, for they were kind, gentle, fond
of the people, and wholly given to good works. So he warned his
countrymen to pay no attention to ribald persons that wrote otherwise,
for they but walked the straight road to destruction.
Copies of this unique production made their way to Europe and in the
end to Paris, where Rizal was then living. In October of that year,
1889, appeared in Paris a rejoinder to sycophancy that set on edge the
teeth of every Filipino in Europe. It was unsigned, but to the colonies
the authorship seemed unmistakable. Only one Filipino could write like
that; only one Filipino could wither with such disdainful sarcasm the
apologist for the wrongers of his country.
The manifesto closes with this paragraph:
When a people is torn asunder, when its dignity, its honor, and all
its liberties are trodden underfoot; when now no legal recourse
remains against the tyranny of its oppressors; when its complaints,
its supplications, and its groans are not listened to; when it is
not even allowed to cry; when its last hope is torn from its heart
... then ... then ... then! ... there remains no other remedy but
to snatch with delirious hand, from the accursed altars, the bloody
and suicidal dagger of revolution!
Cæsar, we, who are about to die, salute thee! [121]
The judgment of the Filipinos in Europe could hardly have been wrong.
There is every reason to hold with them that the writer of this fierce
cry of warning was Rizal.
CHAPTER X
FILIPINO INDOLENCE
The Indio that had startled the Spanish colony in Manila by daring to
call the Philippines “my fatherland” proved his loyalty to the country
he adored by serving it with a discriminating zeal. He would have been
more picturesque if he had been well galvanized by Chauvin, but less
useful. His mind, though powerful, could work in only one way, which
was in orderly motions. These prevented him from dwelling so much on
his country’s wrongs that he forgot his country’s faults. For this
reason, and because he could have no heated bearings in his mental
processes, he was Filipinas’s greatest asset. In “Noli Me Tangere” he
showed that he understood well the native defects (products of the
System) and would spare them no more than he spared the friars. But it
was for his countrymen’s good that he rebuked them, like a wise father
correcting his children; and whatever might be his employments he never
forgot two great vital visions, Filipinas fast bound in the
prison-house and education tardily on its way to set her free.
With the same purpose of helping this good angel the sooner to smite
the prison locks, he now set himself an unusual task. He was to master
French; not after the fashion of the schools, for that he already had,
nor for the mere pleasure of acquiring it, but to be able to write in
it as if it were his native tongue. He knew what he was about in this;
if his novels should fail to arouse the Filipinos he was determined to
appeal to Europe in behalf of his country, and he conceived that he
could best do this in French. Therefore with indefatigable ardor he
pursued the French verb and the other phenomena of Gallic speech into
their remotest fastnesses. He took what might be called
post-postgraduate work in these arid excursions, employing the help of
unusual scholars and including colloquial French with French of the
Academy. When we come upon the fact that at the end of these labors he
was able to prepare as a text-book for French students a volume of
French exercises [122] we may perceive that his success was out of the
ordinary.
In Paris when the exposition of 1889 came on he was struck with the
fact that in that vast and imposing procession of the children of earth
his own people, whom he felt and knew to be as worthy as the others,
had no place. Therefore he organized an international league to make
known to the world the facts about the Filipinos and to refute the
slanders that Spanish writers had sown thickly in European literature.
He called this society the “Association Internationale des
Philippinistes.” Dr. Blumentritt was president, Dr. Rost
vice-president, and Dr. Planchut of Paris one of the directors. [123]
If Rizal was a nationalist, he was also an internationalist; a fact
that must be already apparent in these annals. No doubt, being wise
about other things, he was not deceived into thinking that
internationalism could come by any other than the nationalist route.
The first of the declared objects of his Association Internationale was
to summon an international congress. Others were to study the
Philippines historically and scientifically, to create a Philippine
library and museum of Philippine objects, to publish books on
Philippine topics, and to arouse public interest in these objects.
That the world looked with some disdain upon his people, that under the
spell of the Spanish pen it ignored the honorable record of Philippine
culture and the stirring Philippine history, were thorns that gave his
mind no rest. None knew so well as he that this misprision was rankly
unjust. In the face of almost universal opinion in Europe, he knew that
the Malay mind, though different, was not inferior; he knew that what
it wanted was no more than the sunlight and free air. In all ways the
general verdict was askew: the Filipinos were not even innately lazy,
as hundreds of writers had asserted, hundreds still repeated, and
doubtless other hundreds will continue to parrot for years to come. He
knew that lazy people could never have made the progress the Filipino
had made before the evil day of the Spanish flag. The respect he had
for the latent powers of his countrymen sprang from research and not
from prejudice. It was true enough, but not a truth that he could keep
refrigerated in scientific abstractions. It burned and struggled in him
like something fighting to get free, and he relieved himself of an
intolerable protest by writing (for “La Solidaridad”) a brochure on the
subject.
“The Indolence of the Filipino” [124] it is called, and, if he had
written nothing else, thoughtful men would still admire him for the
cool, masterly marshaling of his reasonings in this. He purposes to
deal with the truth. “Let us calmly examine the facts,” he says in
beginning, “using on our part all the impartiality of which a man is
capable who is convinced that there is no redemption except upon solid
bases of virtue.” Two pages later he says:
Examining well, then, all the scenes and all the men that we have
known from childhood, and examining the life of our country, we
believe that indolence does exist there. The Filipinos, who can
measure up with the most active peoples in the world, will
doubtless not repudiate this admission, for it is true that in the
Philippines one works and struggles against the climate, against
nature, and against man. But we must not take the exception for the
general rule, and should rather seek the good of our country by
stating what we believe to be true. We must confess that indolence
does actually and positively exist there, only that, instead of
holding it to be the cause of the backwardness and the troubles of
the country, we regard it as the effect of the troubles and the
backwardness, by the fostering of a lamentable predisposition....
[125]
The predisposition exists. Why should it not?
A hot climate requires of the individual quiet and rest, just as
cold invites to labor and action. For this reason the Spaniard is
more indolent than the Frenchman, the Frenchman more indolent than
the German. The Europeans themselves that so liberally reproach the
residents of the colonies (and I am not now speaking of the
Spaniards but of the Germans and English themselves), how do they
live in tropical countries? Surrounded with a numerous train of
servants, never going about but riding in a carriage, needing
servants not only to take off their shoes for them but even to fan
them! And yet they live and eat better, they work for themselves,
they look for riches, they hope for a future, free and respected,
while the poor colonist, the indolent colonist, is badly nourished,
has no hope, toils for others, and works under force and
compulsion!
Perhaps the reply to this will be that the white men are not made
to stand the severity of the climate. A mistake! A man can live in
any climate, if he will only adapt himself to its requirements and
conditions.
What kills the Europeans in hot countries is the abuse of liquors,
the attempt to live according to the nature of his own country
under another sky and another sun. We inhabitants of hot countries
live well in northern Europe whenever we take the precautions the
people there take. Likewise Europeans can endure the torrid zone if
they will but rid themselves of their prejudices.
The fact is that in tropical countries violent work is not a good
thing as it is in cold countries. In tropical countries it is
death, destruction, annihilation. Nature knows this and has
therefore made the earth in tropical countries more fertile, more
productive, as a compensation. An hour’s work under that burning
sun, in the midst of the pernicious influence springing from nature
in activity, is equal to a day’s work in a temperate climate. It is
just, then, that the earth should yield a hundredfold! [126]
Moreover, do we not see the active European, who has gained
strength during the winter, who feels the fresh blood of spring
boil in his veins, do we not see him abandon his labors during the
few days of his variable summer, close his office—where the work is
not, after all, violent, where, in many cases, it amounts to
talking and gesticulating in the shade or near a luncheon stand—do
we not see him flee to watering-places where he sits idle in the
cafés or idly strolls about? What wonder then that the inhabitant
of tropical countries, worn out and with his blood thinned by the
continuous and excessive heat, is reduced to inaction! Who is the
indolent one in the Manila offices? Is it the poor clerk who comes
in at 8 in the morning and leaves at 4 in the afternoon with only
his umbrella, who copies and writes and works for himself and for
his chief, or is it the chief, who comes in a carriage at 10
o’clock, leaves before 12, reads his newspaper while smoking and,
with his feet cocked up on a chair or a table, gossips about all
his friends?
Man is not a brute; he is not a machine. His object is not merely
to produce; in spite of the pretensions of some Christian whites
who would make of the colored Christian a kind of motive-power
somewhat more intelligent and less costly than steam. [127]
Rizal found that in regard to indolence the Philippines were like a
patient with a long continued disease. The doctor attributes the
failure of his medicines to the debility of the patient’s system, and
the patient ascribes his debilitated condition to the doctor’s
remedies. He followed his illustration by remarking that, as in the
case of a desperate illness, so in the government of the Philippines,
the attendants seemed to lose their heads and, instead of seeking the
causes of the disease to remove them, devoted themselves to attacking
the symptoms, with here blood-letting (taxation), there a plaster
(forced labor), and there a sedative (trifling reform).
Every new arrival proposes a new remedy: one, seasons of prayer,
the relics of a saint, the viaticum, the friars; another, a
shower-bath; still another, with pretensions to modern ideas, a
transfusion of the blood [that is to say, an agricultural colony of
Europeans]. It’s nothing, only the patient has eight million
indolent red corpuscles [Filipinos]; some few white corpuscles in
the form of an agricultural colony will get us out of the
trouble.... [128]
Yes, transfusion of blood, transfusion of blood! New life, new
vitality! Yes, the new white corpuscles that you are going to
inject into its veins, the new white corpuscles that were a cancer
in another organism, will withstand all the depravity of the
system, will withstand the blood-letting that it suffers every day,
will have more stamina than all the eight million red corpuscles,
will cure all the disorders, all the degeneration, all troubles in
the principal organs.
Be thankful if they do not become coagulations and produce
gangrene; be thankful if they do not reproduce the cancer!
He comes then to the central fact he has undertaken to establish. Here
it is in the teeth of the plausible assertions of prejudice and the
selfish interests that depreciate the natives:
Indolence in the Philippines is a chronic, but not a hereditary
malady.
The Filipinos have not always been what they are. Witnesses to this
statement are all the historians of the first years after the
discovery of the islands. [129]
Long before the coming of the Spaniards the Malayan Filipinos had an
organized and outstretching commerce, foreign as well as domestic. A
Chinese writer of the thirteenth century has recorded their intimate
commercial relations with China, the probity and zeal of the Filipino
merchants, the great extent of the trade they carried on. They exported
cotton, cloth, pearls, tortoise-shell, betel-nuts, and other
commodities the making or preparing or gathering of which meant
industry.
Pigafetta, a Spanish writer with Magellan, speaks of the great variety
of the island products. The natives worked mines, produced and wrought
in metals, made ingenious and effective weapons, wove silk into their
artistic dresses, and even made false teeth of gold. Their agricultural
products were of kinds not to be had without labor.
The early Spaniards reported the Filipinos to be daring and
indefatigable sailors, whose fleets of merchantmen covered the waters
of the Islands and made far voyages, even regularly to Siam. Filipino
soldiers fought in the wars of other countries. In 1539 they took part
in the wars of Sumatra, and it was their valor that overthrew there a
renowned potentate, the sultan of Atchin.
Magellan’s people testified that industriously the Filipinos tilled the
soil, each man having his own field. It was a wealthy country:
food-stuffs were abundant, the natives were well fed. Legaspi’s
expedition (about 1591) reported again on their large variety of
products, including manufactures of iron, porcelain and cloth. Nowhere
was to be noted poverty or savagery; business had attained to an
excellent growth. The natives knew something about the rest of the
world; there were even among them, before a Spanish ship had ever
anchored in Philippine waters, men that knew the Spanish language,
having no doubt acquired it in their travels. When Cebu, a city of one
hundred thousand inhabitants, was burned with all its food-supplies,
its people did not suffer hunger, because the surrounding country
quickly and intelligently organized to meet the emergency with abundant
relief.
All the histories of those first years, in short, abound in long
accounts about the industry and agriculture of the natives: mines,
gold-washings, looms, farms, barter, naval construction, raising of
poultry and stock, weaving of silk and cotton, distilleries,
manufactures of arms, pearl fisheries, the civet industry, the horn
and hide industry, etc., are things encountered at every step, and,
considering the time and the conditions in the Islands, prove that
there was life, there was activity, there was movement. [130]
He cites de Morga to show that indolence came upon the Filipinos after
the Spanish domination and was not conspicuous before that time. De
Morga’s seven years as lieutenant-governor of Manila should have
instructed him about this, when he says that the natives under the
Spaniards lost some of the trades in which they had been most
successful. They had even forgotten much about farming, the raising of
poultry, of live stock, of cotton, about the weaving of cloth as they
used to weave it in their paganism and for a time after their country
had been conquered.
Other Spaniards of that period bore witness to the same decline; and
generations later a German traveler, observing the differences between
the habits of the natives under Spanish rule and of those that were
still unsubdued, asked if the industrious free peoples would not in
their turn become indolent when Christianity and Spain should be forced
upon them. “The Filipinos,” Rizal justly concludes from these
testimonies, “in spite of the climate, in spite of their few needs
(they were less then than now), were not the indolent creatures of our
time.” [131]
What, then, brought them down from their normal standards of activity
and enterprise?
A fatal combination of causes, he finds.
First, the continual wars and the insurrections that were provoked by
Spanish cruelty. When there was no civil strife abroad in the
Philippines, able-bodied men were drafted to fight for Spain in Borneo
or Indo-China; or there were huge expeditions, usually failures, that
took away thousands of the best young men and never returned them. He
quotes the Spanish writer, Gaspar de San Agustin, showing how one
formerly populous town had been greatly shorn of inhabitants because,
being noted as sailors and oarsmen, the Government took them for
foreign service. [132] In this way, the island of Panay, which had
fifty thousand families when the Spaniards came, had been reduced to
fifteen thousand.
Ten years after the Legaspi expedition, that is to say, in 1581, sixty
years after Magellan’s “discovery,” the islands had lost one third of
the total population. [133]
Of course, it was the young, the hardy, the capable, the industrious
that went by this route to further the cold schemes of Spanish
ambition.
Under such a drain faded the moral and material resources of the
people.
Second, we are to remember the ravages of the pirates. Before the days
of Magellan these audacious plunderers had with avidity pursued their
calling in Philippine waters, but what is not generally known is that
their activities greatly increased under the Spanish domination. The
Spaniards encouraged the pirates, not to prey upon Spanish settlements,
but to terrorize remote populations, to make them amenable to Spanish
rule, in some instances to disclose what weapons the natives had that
these might be snatched from them, and sometimes merely to be rid of
objectionable communities. As the pirates did a thriving commerce in
slaves, to eliminate, with their help, the undesirable was easy. De
Morga says:
The boldness of these people of Mindanao [pirates] did great damage
to the Visayan Islands, as much by what they did in them as by the
fear and fright that the natives acquired; because the natives were
in the power of the Spaniards, who held them subject and tributary
and unarmed, in such manner that they did not protect them from
their enemies nor leave them means with which to defend themselves
as they did when there were no Spaniards in the country. [134]
Rizal lays the emphasis of capitals upon this last phrase, which indeed
seems powerful evidence, coming from such a source.
The pirates came every year, sometimes five times, sometimes ten, and
an average visit cost the Islands more than eight hundred persons.
Gaspar de San Agustin tells of an Island near Cebu that by 1608 the
pirates had almost depopulated and points to the fact that the natives
had no defense.
Third, forced labor. This was a grievous matter: again and again it
drove the Filipinos to revolt, but the Spaniards would learn nothing
and to the last clung to a thing certain to wreck them. Its evils were
first manifest in the ship-building enterprises the Spaniards
undertook. They found the Filipinos among the best natural
ship-builders in the world, having constructed, as before noted, some
of the largest vessels then afloat. Other great vessels were planned by
the Spaniards, and to get out quickly the needed timbers they compelled
thousands of natives to work without pay and to provide their own food;
a viler than ordinary form of slavery. To get out the masts for one
galleon, six thousand natives were employed for three months, finding
their own subsistence. Trees large enough to furnish these masts grew
only in the interior; the labor of moving them through jungle and over
mountains was enormous. Fernando de los Rios Coronel says that “the
surrounding country had to be depopulated” in the ship-building work
and that the natives furnished the timbers “with immense labor, damage,
and cost to themselves.” San Agustin says that “the continual labor of
cutting timber for his Majesty’s shipyards” was a great cause of the
decline in population because it hindered people “from cultivating the
very fertile plain they have.”
Fourth, taxes and the cruelty of the Government. De los Rios Coronel
cites “the natives that were executed, those that left their wives and
children and fled in disgust to the mountains, those that were sold
into slavery to pay the taxes levied upon them,” among the elements
disappearing from the population. There were also, it appears from San
Agustin, to be added “those flogged to death, women crushed to death by
their heavy burdens, those that sleep in the fields and there bear and
nurse their children and die bitten by poisonous vermin, the many that
are executed or left to die of hunger, those that eat poisonous herbs,
and the mothers that kill their children in bearing them.” [135] It is
not an exhilarating picture; to believe it we must remind ourselves
that it is limned by Spaniards: it can have no impulse to a hostile
exaggeration.
The fields once cleared ceased to be cultivated; the towns once
flourishing lost population and trade. The Filipino was launched on a
backward career. Because,
Fifth, there was the psychological or spiritual fruitage of all this
lethargy.
Worse than all the others and the culminating cause, this was. The
Filipino’s spirit sank under the alien yoke. It appears that he no
longer cared; what was there to care for? Spanish polity offered him in
exchange for his lost liberty here only the prospect of salvation in
another life. The bargain was not stimulating. Salvation depended in no
degree upon terrestrial industry; the idle were saved equally with the
active. We think, besides, that a racial spring was touched too fine to
be suspected by the trampling soldiers that Spain sent over to walk
upon these bowed necks. The Malay responds to kindness; under blows,
compulsion, or superior brute force he retires within himself into a
sullen apathy. This now fell upon the native wherever the Spanish flag
waved and to the extent that the Spanish methods prevailed. To go
beyond Rizal’s able treatise and to record what even he could not have
expected, the Americans, when their day came, noted with astonishment
that the Filipinos of the South were more active, industrious, and
resilient than their brothers in the North, although this was to
reverse the usual order of nature. Some Americans ascribed the
Southerner’s advantage to his religion and credited to Mohammedanism a
virtue it hardly possessed. The real explanation, which abundantly
confirms Rizal’s thesis, is that the Southerner had never gone under
the lethal yoke of the Spanish conception of society.
Even when actual slavery was not enforced upon the native, the returns
for his labor and efforts were so meager and uncertain he had no longer
an incentive to work. There was a kind of padrone or contractor called
the encomendero to whom the people of a district were virtually
delivered over that he might extract from them all available profit and
steer back to Spain with both pockets stuffed with the gold he had
wrung from their toil. Usually this person had no other interest than
to make his exit as early as possible and as heavily laden, to the
which ends conscience should be no hindrance. He robbed the natives of
produce where he could not steal labor; he used false measures in
buying and selling. The unhappy Filipinos had no appeal. In one town
where a particularly brutal encomendero exacted additional tribute by
using a steelyard twice as long as it should have been, they rose and
tried to kill him—it appears, unfortunately, without success. [136]
De San Agustin gives these practices as the reason why the gold-mines
of Panay, once “very rich,” had ceased to be worked; the natives
preferred to live in poverty rather than to work under the conditions
imposed upon them. Exploitation was the business of the Spaniard (from
the governor down), and the only business that seems to have been
attended to with diligence. To get rich quickly and to get home to
spend the money was the real inspiration, an impulse not unknown in
other parts of the earth where with his trusty rifle the white man has
imposed his peculiar civilization upon his dark-skinned brother. In
some places the dark brother under these ministrations lies down and
dies; in the Philippines he ceased to work except under the lash or
when he was fomenting an insurrection. Reviewing these facts the
superior wisdom supposed to lurk mysteriously under the white skin
seems to require much explanation.
Rizal points out that while in his time the pirates had ceased from
troubling and the Dutch colonists were at rest, the other causes of the
Filipino uneasiness went on undiminished to a loud chorus of
denunciation from the elements responsible for these evils. As usual,
names had shifted, the essentials of exploitation were unchanged. The
encomendero was no longer the commanding figure in the process of
extracting and coining the toilers’ sweat; it was now the local
governor, the friar, or both, but the machinery in use was the same. He
quotes a French traveler of his own time that observed with
astonishment the operations of a typical governor in whose hands “the
high and noble functions he performs are nothing more than instruments
of gain. He monopolizes all the business and instead of developing the
love of work, instead of stimulating the natives to overcome the too
natural indolence, he with the abuse of his powers thinks only of
destroying all competition that may trouble him or attempt to
participate in his profits. It matters little to him that the country
is impoverished, without commerce, without industry, if only the
governor is quickly enriched.” [137]
The whole story deserves the attention of mankind; the debacle and its
causes. It is a simulacrum of exploitation and exploitation’s fatal
results.
To do business in the Philippines, as we understand business, was
almost impossible, year of grace 1890, so numerous were the obstacles,
documents, papers, signatures, tangles of red tape to be unwound,
officers to be bribed. If there is no commerce, how can there be
industry? If there is no industry what shall the masses of people do
but idle? “The most commercial and most industrious countries have been
the freest,” says Rizal; “France, England, and the United States prove
this. Hong-Kong, while it is not worth the most insignificant of the
Philippines, has more commercial movement than all these Islands
together because it is free and well governed.”
The Spanish aristocrats in the Islands contributed to the general
impulse to indolence. They posed as superior persons and exalted
models, yet they did no work and despised all that labored. The vice of
gambling, which the Spaniards deliberately encouraged in the natives,
added to the general stagnation; not only cock-fighting (officially
protected and a source of government revenue) but other gaming. It is a
passion to which the Malay blood seems peculiarly susceptible, as the
Chinese are to opium-smoking. Under government encouragement gambling
became almost a native obsession wherever the Spanish rule was
strongest. Having taught them to gamble, the Spaniards denounced the
Filipinos as a race of gamblers; but this was again a species of
injustice of which the Spaniard had no monopoly. It is easy to instance
white communities that refuse to allow colored men to perform any but
menial offices and then despise them as a race of menials. As to this
practice in the United States of America, for example, reference may
profitably be had to the pointed comments of Mr. George Bernard Shaw.
Agriculture is the natural business of the Islands. Hebetudinous
government in Rizal’s time did nothing to encourage or even to defend
it. The farmer went his way, preyed upon by the most villainous system
of interest pillage so far disclosed in human affairs, [138] and the
Government gave him never so much as a friendly word. When crops
failed, when typhoons wrought huge destruction, when the plague of
locusts turned some great green valley to naked desolation, the
Government looked on indifferently and sent another tax collector.
It would not even seek a market for the insular products.
“Add to this lack of material inducement,” says Rizal, “the absence of
moral stimulus, and you will see how he who is not indolent in that
country must needs be a madman or at least a fool.”
The injustice with which the native was treated everywhere, merely
because of his birth and his color, atrophied his energies; such were
the windings and curlings of the vile snake of racial antipathy. Let
the Filipino with whatsoever effort achieve whatsoever prize in fair
competition with a white man, and the wreath he had won by worth would
be snatched from him by trickery or plain theft. Why, then, should he
strive?
But still worse were the evils of what was called by way of euphony the
educational system maintained under this dispensation.
Take the best of these schools, or so-called schools, and at their
best. “They amount,” says Rizal, “to five or ten years each of 150 days
at most, in which the youth comes in contact with those very priests
that boldly proclaim that it is an evil for the natives to know
Castilian [Spanish], that the native should not be separated from his
carabao, [139] that he should not have any further aspirations, and so
on; five to ten years in which the majority of the students have
grasped nothing more than that no one understands what the books say,
not even the professors themselves, perhaps; and these five to ten
years have to offset the daily preachment of the whole life, that
preachment which lowers the dignity of man, which by degrees brutally
deprives him of the sentiment of self-esteem, that eternal, stubborn,
constant labor to bow the native’s neck, to make him accept the yoke,
to place him on a level with the beast.
“Deprive a man, then, of his dignity, and you not only deprive him of
his moral strength but you also make him useless even for those that
wish to make use of him. Every creature has its stimulus, its
main-spring. Man’s is his self-esteem. Take it away from him and he is
a corpse, and he that seeks activity in a corpse will encounter only
worms.” [140]
Finally there was the paralysis laid upon the Filipino because he was
divested of the infinite sustaining and guiding strength of a national
sentiment.
Without this no people can realize the good that is potential within
them, no people can ever attain to the self-expression that is their
due, and no people will ever manifest their normal activities. “A man
in the Philippines is only an individual—he is not a member of a
nation. He is forbidden and denied the right of association, and is
therefore weak and sluggish. The Philippines is an organism whose cells
seem to have no arterial system to irrigate it or nervous system to
communicate its impressions.... The result of this is that if a
prejudicial measure is ordered, no one protests: all goes well
apparently until later the evils are felt. Another blood-letting and as
the organism has neither nerves nor voice the physician proceeds in the
belief that the treatment is not injuring it. It needs a reform, but as
it must not speak, it keeps silent and remains with the need.” [141]
Thus of the possible contribution of these people the world was
deprived because a grotesquely unintelligent tyranny stifled the
expression of their natural forces. It is the office of absolutism to
try to make men think alike. This absolutism tried to keep them from
thinking at all.
Once the Filipino was active, alert, industrious, prosperous. Now he
had become inert, often inept, indifferent, poor. For these
transformations, behold here the reasons. They are enough.
With more than one purpose we have dwelt at length upon this remarkable
treatise. It shows Rizal’s mind, how clear and strong, and his
thinking, how firm and sure. It shows how logically he arranged his
ideas to a climax, a faculty that marks all his writings. It shows how
well based upon reading and reason, no less than upon observation, was
his faith in the Filipino people. Not from mere instinct nor from
racial prejudice, he felt that here was a great and suppressed power.
We dwell upon it also because it offers an unequaled picture of the
Philippines after three hundred years of alien rule and indicates the
appalling boundaries of the task that he had single-handed undertaken.
Courage is the quality that mankind has elected most to honor. Surely
the courage of battle-fields is little compared with the supreme
courage of a man that looking level-eyed upon such terrific
difficulties as are outlined here sets himself to the one business of
combating and overcoming them.
One other reflection pertains to this chapter, profoundly suggestive to
any mind that will give heed to it. After all these generations of a
system so elaborately designed to annihilate their spirits and
chloroform their energies, the Malays of the Islands were still
unerased. A few years after Rizal’s so able plea for them had been
written they were in arms beating back the best troops of the
oppressor. Thirty years later, under changed auspices, they were giving
to the world a conspicuous example of intelligent and successful
self-government. No sooner was applied to them the stimulus of a
measure of freedom than the old reproach of indolence began to fail.
In thirty years they had demonstrated the truth of all this man had
said of them. Sympathetic insight proved to be better than the solemn
platitudes of wise men reasoning backward. As you see the Filipino now,
said the wise men, so he must be always. Indolence—it is of the race
and incurable! With a dash of his pen Rizal sent all this seven ways.
He knew the heart of Filipinas; the wise men knew only what had been
written by somebody who had read what somebody else had deduced about
her.
CHAPTER XI
WHAT MANNER OF MAN
More than the persecutions launched against his family disturbed Rizal
in the news he was receiving now from Manila. The fire of discontent
was rising among the people of the Philippines; the letters of his
friends foreshadowed an explosion. Not revolution by peaceful means was
at hand but another civil war. He determined to go to Madrid that he
might talk with the Filipinos there about these storm-signals and at
the same time lodge with the Spanish Government a formal protest
against the eviction of the family from its Calamba property.
At Madrid he found the situation much changed in the five years of his
absence. In the Filipino colony the feeling had gained that from such a
Government nothing was to be won by appeals and agitation. For an
illustration men pointed to Cuba. Petitions, reasonings, arguments,
beseechings wrought nothing. Whatever Cuba had gained was tribute to
its sword. Against this Rizal still counseled. Even in such a crisis he
could not rid his mind of the doctrine of fitness for self-government,
and so long as he reasoned more than he allowed himself to feel, he
could not compromise with his overmastering horror of war.
In this, again, he had outstripped the current thought of his age. A
world without war was then the dream of a few enthusiasts, looking to
another generation or to some mystic transformation in the chemistry of
human blood; what were called practical men went on devising new
torpedoes and more powerful explosives for the next conflict. In his
own way, different from theirs, he was himself as truly a practical man
as ever lived, and a warless humanity was no dream to him; he thought
he could see it close at hand. He thought he could see his fellow-men
of all lands surrendering the lunacy of combat for a rational
settlement of international troubles by agreement and arbitration. Out
of the reflexes of his own thought and spirit he was instructed that
the hour for this transformation had come.
Up to that time, certainly, the lessons of history, his favorite study,
were against him. There can be no doubt that a condition of oppression
or general injustice is in essence a condition of violence, and so far
in the human story half-emancipated man has found no way to end one
condition of violence except by means of another. “It will have blood,
they say, blood will have blood,” might have been written across the
gates of every house of tyranny. The hope that the frightful wrongs
laid upon the Filipinos could be an exception to this primordial rule
was alluring to a soul like Rizal’s. We can see now that in the
existing stage of civilization it was no better founded than the other
deceptive notion that the sufferings of the common people of France
under the Ancient Régime could have had any result but retribution in
kind. As a matter of strict fact, the Reign of Terror was established
years before Dr. Guillotin thought of his device of “a certain movable
framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history.” It was
in reality assured by the fathers of many innocent and well meaning
ladies and gentlemen whose heads it rolled into the Seine—a painful
thought, but historically indisputable. The fierce philosophy of these
records Rizal could not assimilate; the poet in him revolted at the
ugliness of hatred; he had too genuine a love of his own kind to
tolerate cruelty. Whether in the mass or toward individuals he could
not endure it. These seem to constitute the only set of facts his mind
was unable to absorb. He could in four weeks master a language and
could not in a lifetime well comprehend the caveman’s logic of blows.
This amiable strabismus half blinded him to what was really impending
in his own country. The truth was that the System was slowly forcing a
revolt there; not intentionally, but after the manner of all drunken
power. To lay bare the iniquities of that System was to send against it
the torch and ax. Every page of “Noli Me Tangere” was in effect a call
to battle. He never suspected this, but fact it was nevertheless. To
imagine, as he at one time imagined, that intrenched greed would
without a struggle surrender its privileges and lay by the cracking of
its whips was to imagine that which never was nor shall be. The
reversion to primitive standards was inaugurated, not by Filipino
revolutionists, but by the System itself, which, denying justice, left
to the harassed multitudes nothing but revolution.
At this crux of his story, when he appeared at Madrid as the champion
of an impossible peace, and the eyes and hearts of all his countrymen
were turning to him, the time may be good to describe the man that had
already wielded so tremendous a power.
He was then in his thirty-first year. The first impression one had of
him was of wholesome vigor and physical well-being. He was of rather
slender build, but all of muscle and sinew compact, for he never
remitted his exercises. In height, he was five feet, four inches;
coming of what seems to Occidental eyes an undersized people. From long
hours at his desk he had contracted a slight stoop. His handsome face
retained its fine boyish oval, but rugged character and unshakable
firmness were now stamped upon it, and an expression of melancholy. His
eyes were still remarked for their brightness. His hands were small and
shapely, his feet noticeably small. [142]
His voice was low in pitch, of a noble tonality, and so strangely
vibrant that one hearing it at its best never forgot it. One of his
rules was never to raise it; he spoke always with an identical
restraint. With such a voice and with his flow of apt and picturesque
language he was equipped for public speaking, in which he had made on
several occasions a rather marked success; yet he always thought
lightly of the art of oratory and refused to pursue it.
Whether among his friends or in his writings he had ordinarily little
to say about himself, and there is but one recorded instance when he
seemed to give way to the bitter recollections that must at times have
assailed him. On this occasion he said to a friend in London with whom
he was walking:
“I have traveled around the world. I have studied the important nations
by personal and direct observation. I have noted well all the races
that have contributed to human progress. I speak all their languages
and others. And yet,” he added with a melancholy smile, “I am to the
friars merely a vulgar half-breed.”
At Madrid, one of his intimates from the Islands was Teodoro Sandiko,
later to be a leader among his people and an honored member of the
Philippine Senate. In a letter recalling their association, Senator
Sandiko once wrote: [143]
Rizal was fond of physical exercise and so was I. We practised
fencing together and soon became good and close friends.
He was simple in his manners, but profound in his studies and
researches, analytical in his mental processes, reflective rather
than sentimental. He was extremely methodical and industrious; I
never saw him idle. He had great confidence in himself, was firm in
his faith, resourceful in the solving of a difficult situation,
swift and sure in his decisions. His habit was to answer without
hesitation and succinctly any question that might be put to him; he
had never to hunt for an idea or a word. He was the most loyal of
friends; anything he possessed was at his friend’s disposal. He was
courteous, affectionate, affable, sincere, but rather serious. His
mental state may be judged from the mass of material he contributed
to “La Solidaridad,” so varied, so forceful and so carefully
prepared.
Wherever he went, he seemed without effort to make friends of all men
that came near him. Set down in a steamer full of strangers, he would
be noted at once by every passenger and before dinner was served would
be on good terms with most of the persons on board, crew included. Yet,
strange to say, he seldom smiled, usually seemed distrait in the midst
of others’ mirth, and was sometimes lost in gloomy musing, when he
seemed all unaware of his surroundings. In the opinion of his friends,
he had almost no self-consciousness; certainly, all his life he hated
affectations and never lost a chance to scorch them with his terrible
sarcasm; for this man of the world, ordinarily so suave and courteous
that he won good will even among his enemies, had certain reserve funds
of censuring speech he could make as bitter as gall. Whether he sat,
walked, stood, talked, or listened he was always natural, always
composed, and always the sure master of himself. When he went through
the United States he noticed that the men there conversed without
gesticulating, contrary to the practice of the Spaniards and most
Europeans. On reflection he deemed the practice to lend strength to
utterance and thereafter made it a rule to keep his hands still while
he talked.
The image of a man that seldom smiled and yet so easily won his fellows
to like him seems out of the drawing of nature and yet in this case is
essentially true. There was in Rizal’s face something almost
irresistibly winning. Good will looked out of it and warm human
sympathy and a kind of downright sincerity that found a way to the
notice of even the dullest. It seemed to one studying him attentively
that on the original lines of a being all love, gentleness, and
meditation had been stamped later a great melancholy and a great and
high resolve. Lowly men seemed to understand instinctively something in
him they could never have formulated nor described, something friendly
and good; and men of learning turned with a similar impulse to a mind
that showed itself so wealthy and still so unpretending.
He loved music, was a good judge of it, and composed it readily and
well. He loved flowers as all other things beautiful—of course, being
an artist born and the instinct ineradicable in him! That charming poem
of his, “The Flowers of Heidelberg” [144] was written in the intervals
between his pursuits of the most advanced discoveries and driest facts
in ophthalmology, surgery, ethnology, entomology, anthropology, and the
penning of some of the fiercest passages of condensed wrath to be found
in any language. It is likely that he saw nothing grotesque in these
abrupt transitions; perfectly sincere men have little time for such
nice questionings. If we regard the making of poetry as the serious
business of his soul, which it was, his chief intellectual relaxation
was chess, of which, by the time of his second visit to Madrid, he had
become a notable player. [145]
He had as little vanity as any man conscious of his powers could
reasonably have. Yet he was always careful of his appearance and took
pains to dress well, after the most modest taste. Even when he was
poverty-stricken in Berlin and living on a daily bowl of coffee and
piece of bread, he would allow himself no laxity in his attire.
Once he wrote of some pupils of his that he was teaching them to behave
like men. [146] It was a point of weight with him. His conception of a
man was one that had at all times himself in full command. This virtue
he had practised assiduously from those old days at the Ateneo when
first he perceived its splendors; and now he was so truly captain of
his own soul that, as we have seen, he could endure privations, subdue
appetites, and urge himself along his road by the sheer force of his
will. He was the greater part of his life desperately poor; yet if he
had been willing to practise his profession for gain a great fortune
was within his grasp. In whatsoever conditions he found himself he
still tried to adhere to that plan he had adopted at the Ateneo of
apportioning his day according to a schedule. He was more careful of
his time than a miser of his gold; he would waste no hour. To his
friends he admitted that when he sat silent in company and seemed to be
moody he was composing his next article for “La Solidaridad” or a new
chapter in one of his books. He was the least superstitious of men, but
for years he had a presentiment that he would die by shooting. Once
crossing Bagumbayan Field he pointed to the place of execution and said
to a companion, “On that spot I shall some day be put to death by a
firing-squad.” As a final light upon a singular character, it is to be
noted that he was not oppressed by this foreboding. It was accompanied
in his mind, as nearly as one can discern, with a conviction that the
cause for which he stood must have its victims, and to this extent and
no farther showed in him the fatalism supposed to be a distinctive
trait of the Malay.
He was ordinarily so calm, so self-contained, so much the example of
the reasoning man and the like, that it seems highly incongruous to
think of him as a duelist; yet twice he challenged to mortal combat. It
appears that under his coolly borne exterior there was fire, and even
his beautiful faith in the supremacy of reason had not eradicated all
the Old Adam from his blood. He seems never to have thought that the
violence he contemplated was nothing but a minute specimen of the
war-making he denounced, nor that in sending challenges he reverted
from his most cherished doctrines. Perhaps if the inconsistency had
been pointed out to him then it would not have disturbed him, and
certainly it is a hobgoblin that need not disturb us now. If the queer
bundle of nerves that is called man never presented a greater
irrelevancy, admiration for him need molt no feather. Both of the
quarrels, if so they might be called, that brought out the fighting
instinct in the gentle artist-student resulted from incidents in Madrid
when he returned there in 1890. W. E. Retana, who had been press-agent
in Manila for the friars, was now a Madrid journalist and printed in
his newspaper a vicious and baseless attack upon Rizal wherein he
sought, doubtless, to revenge the friars on the author of “Noli Me
Tangere.” Without delay Rizal sent him a challenge. Mr. Retana seems to
have had no appetite to go afield; he published a retraction and
apology and the quarrel ended. [147] Rather oddly, Retana, who had been
in Manila the bitter foe of the Filipino cause and of all its champions
(though possibly on a commercial basis), became, after this incident,
first the friend and then the biographer of Rizal.
The other altercation was with Antonio Luna, [148] afterward a famous
commander in the army of the Philippine Republic. About a woman of
Rizal’s acquaintance Luna made an unworthy remark, and Rizal sent him a
challenge. Having possibly regained sobriety meanwhile, Luna withdrew
the remark and apologized for it, whereupon the quarrel was made up
without mortal arbitrament. In his chivalrous and unsullied attitude
toward women Rizal was true to the finest traditions of his race. Among
the faults of the Filipinos, lechery is assuredly not included. Except
the Irish, no other people on earth have a higher conception of
chastity and sex morality, nor adhere to it with greater tenacity.
Retana wrote that Rizal had “a truly upright moral sense.” It was but
an inadequate tribute. He was a champion of righteousness; his religion
was like Wendell Phillips’s, “a battle not a dream.” When he wrote,
“The good of my country, that is all I pursue,” he was not making
platform epigrams but telling what the records confirm.
We have spoken of the purity of his conduct; at least as wonderful is
the fact that he left so little trace of a selfish aim. Other men with
great work to do have had all of his indifference to wealth; what
classifies him as above all these is his far rarer indifference to the
nobler ambitions for fame and power that have beset so many others in
his position and wrecked so many good causes. He sought no place,
looked for no honor, cared for applause as little as finite man could
be expected to care, seemed to have no yearning for ease nor for
pleasure. The lust of the eyes, and that fatal lure, the joy of warming
oneself in the sun of one’s own glory tripped him not. We may admit
that the balance to be drawn from these facts is not wholly a human
figure; one looks for the faults that have disfigured so many other
national heroes and the things that laurel-bearing biographers labor
deftly to conceal. There seems to be nothing to conceal about this man.
And if the tale of his virtues seems at times overwrought so that we
might be relieved to find somewhere that he swore, was easily angered,
or chewed tobacco or fought a cabman, we are to remember that as his
ideals bore him to unusual heights, so it was an unusual condition that
forced him early in life to surrender every purpose but the
emancipation of his country. And when we have made all allowances for
the power of this ambition that swept him along, the fact will remain
and be inevitable in the records that here was a strange figure to walk
in upon us in the nineteenth century from the ends of the earth.
There remains to be noted a singular fact about that leadership of his
people, forced upon him as we have noted, and not of his designing or
plotting. With his prestige and the popularity that was the certain
consequence of a success so gratifying to the hurt national pride, he
had but to make a gesture to his countrymen and they would have
followed him over the smoking ruins of Malacañan or any other place,
fighting with bolos if they could come by no rifles. It was a
temptation to dramatics on the world stage that few men could have
resisted. What reality of stern virtue, worthier of a legendary age
than of his own times, was in this man may be gaged from the fact that
he not so much resisted the temptation as ignored it. Perhaps to him it
was no temptation; at least he may be thought of as living in his inner
and real self, where such things weighed nothing. The time demanded
from a revolutionary leader a proclamation and loud cheers; he met it
with a learned treatise on taxation and how taxation might be improved.
Bitter are the penalties that attend a dark skin! But for his
complexion the world would class him with its purest and best, with
Washington and William the Silent, Phocion and Brutus, Garrison and
Wendell Phillips, and the rest of the scanty band that, having great
tasks thrust upon them, forgot themselves and their tenements of clay
to think only of the Common Good.
As to how José Rizal would stand such a test applied to his career and
all of it, take this testimony of Retana, who from antecedent
probability at least would invent no extravagance of praise. Even in
his youth, said Retana, every injustice, every crime, every wrong,
struck home to his sensibilities. He walked with unsmirched garments
through a world filled with the reek of a sordid time and the cruelty
that man works upon man, trying to make a protest against all
oppressions and busy to the end with the troubles of his fellows but
not with his own.
To this sketch of his moral self, not less engaging than his physical
portraiture, remains to be added one line. Pursued indefatigably by
bigotry and prejudice, he was himself of a singular tolerance. The
wrongs of his people he resented with towering indignation, and his own
he viewed with an astonishing calm. To the gibes and sneers and taunts
of his foes he had but the one habitual response:
“To understand all is to forgive all!”
CHAPTER XII
“EL FILIBUSTERISMO”
For Spanish or Filipino ears, “filibuster” has nothing of the comic or
disreputable suggestion that it bears to the American. In the
Philippines of Rizal’s day it denoted a person opposed to the existing
régime, an insurgent, whether advocating peaceful or violent means of
separation from Spain. “El Filibusterismo” means a movement for
Philippine independence.
In this novel again, the chief figure is Ibarra, the hero of “Noli Me
Tangere.” It was Elias, not Ibarra, that was struck with the bullets of
the Civil Guards when they were pursuing his banca; Ibarra escaped
unhurt. He made his way out of the country and now returns after some
years, disguised and under an assumed name, to seek the revenge upon
which all this time his heart has been brooding. The difference between
the Ibarra that refused Elias’ prayer to lead the people and this
Ibarra become now hopeless of any peaceful remedy betrays once more the
change we have already noted as coming over Rizal’s most cherished
convictions and in spite of himself. A struggle was going on between
what he still wished to believe and what his judgment told him was
inevitable, and in the conflict he grew in hardihood. From the savage
vengeance that pursued his sisters, brothers, father, and mother when
it had failed to reach him, he was beginning to learn how idle was the
hope to win reform by merely ladylike appeals. Yet the book was not of
purpose any signal to popular revolt. What he intended was solemn
warning. So far the Filipino has stood and asked for justice, still
patient, still holding out the friendly hand. Wronged hearts will not
always accept scurvy affronts; men will not always put up with kicks
when they ask fair play. This Filipino whom you despise and trample on
nineteen years in twenty and who, in the twentieth, throws you into a
panic, is not the human dish-cloth you are pleased now to imagine him.
He has in him the capacity for a great and memorable revenge, and upon
your heads he will pull down your structure if you do not hear him.
Other characters of the first book reappear in this. Father Salvi, the
lascivious friar whose machinations brought about Ibarra’s downfall;
Capitán Tiago, Doña Victorina, and Basilio, the son of Sisa. Ibarra
calls himself Mr. Simoun. His pretended business is that of a traveling
merchant of jewelry and laces; his real occupation is to spy out the
land, to lay plots against the governing class that ruined him, and, if
possible, to release Maria Clara from her convent prison. The narrative
is chiefly concerned with these plots and their failure; but behind
them always seems to show a grim figure telling Government that such
plots will not always fail.
The book starts with a gibe at the people with whose tardiness to
respond to progressive ideas Rizal was becoming impatient.
One morning in December the steamer Tabo was laboriously ascending
the tortuous course of the Pasig, carrying a large crowd of
passengers toward the province of La Laguna. She was a heavily
built steamer, almost round, like the taboo from which she derived
her name, quite dirty in spite of her pretentious whiteness,
majestic and grave from her leisurely motion. Altogether, she was
held in great affection in that region, perhaps from her Tagalog
name, or from the fact that she bore the characteristic impress of
things in the country, representing something like a triumph over
progress, a steamer that was not a steamer at all, an organism,
stolid, imperfect, yet unimpeachable, which, when it wished to pose
as being rankly progressive, proudly contented itself with putting
on a fresh coat of paint. Indeed, the happy steamer was genuinely
Filipino! If a person were only reasonably considerate, she might
have been taken for the Ship of State, constructed, as she had
been, under the inspection of Reverendos and Ilustrísimos.
As before, Rizal uses with photographic accuracy the materials of
Philippine life that had passed under his own observation. The
wanderings of Simoun the jeweler give him the needed occasions; he
hangs upon them startling pictures of actual conditions, the power of
the friars, the brutality and cowardice of the governing class, the
terrible wrongs of the people; even the story of Maria Clara’s
parentage he had from an incident in his own neighborhood. Poverty,
chastity, [149] and obedience were the oath of the degenerate
successors to a noble race of Christianity’s pioneers. How lightly they
regarded the second item in this creed he had shown in “Noli Me
Tangere.” As to poverty, their corporations had become the wealthiest
institutions in the Islands. He is now about to show how they had
obtained the wealth that made their power supreme and pervasive.
Tandang Selo is a native wood-cutter that by industry and self-denial
has saved a little money. He has a son, Tales, industrious and thrifty
like himself. Tales works for a rich landowner and saves enough to buy
two carabaos, to marry, and to accumulate a capital of several hundred
pesos. He has ambition; he wishes to rise in the world. There is the
jungle, unclaimed, untilled, but fertile. With his father, his wife,
and children he goes into it, clears away the forest, and makes
tillable fields.
To cut for the first time the jungle turf is supposed to release a
dangerous malaria. Of this, Tales’s wife and eldest child fall ill and
die. The others continue to plant and to cultivate.
As they begin to harvest the first crop, an agent of the friars
appears, notifies them that the land belongs to one of the orders, and
levies on the crop for the rent.
Tales has every reason to believe that the claim is fraudulent, but he
is only an Indio; the courts are organized against him and his people,
and he pays tribute rather than risk a lawsuit.
The next year the crops are good and the friars double the rent.
Nevertheless the family works hard and saves a little money. The desire
of the father’s heart is to send his eldest daughter, Juli, to school
in Manila. Next year the rent is again increased, and the hope of
education begins to fail.
When the rent has risen from thirty to two hundred pesos, Tales refuses
to pay the latest increase. Then the friars’ agent tells him to prepare
to be evicted, for another tenant will come and till the fields Tales
has won from the jungle.
Tales applies to the courts for relief and is at once despoiled of his
savings to pay the fees; likewise to satisfy the cormorants that batten
upon every court proceeding.
The farm is exposed to the raids of the tulisanes, or robbers. The
invisible government has energy enough to play eavesdropper upon its
own people, but makes scarcely an effort to restrain the banditti that
hover in all the forests and often descend upon the towns, even large
towns.
To protect his fields from these vultures, Tales patrols them with a
shot-gun and so terrifies the friars’ agents and the new tenant that
the benevolent intention of turning him into the road must be abandoned
until the lawsuit shall be decided.
Under the code his case is unassailable. Even by their own charter the
friars cannot own land. The judges know that this is so, but one of
their number loses his place for giving a decision in favor of a
native; the rest have no desire to share his fate and so to go back to
Spain humiliated as well as impoverished. They advise Tales to
surrender and pay what is demanded of him. The fighting blood of the
Malay is up within him: he stands in his place and demands that the
friars produce some evidence of ownership—title-deeds, documents,
papers, anything. None of these have the friars to show; their claim
here, as so often in such cases, rests upon the tradition of a
concession. Nowhere else would such a plea, unsupported and
unwitnessed, be seriously considered in a court of justice. In the
Philippines it outweighs everything else, and the judges decide in
favor of the friars.
Tales with his gun continues to patrol his land. The friars obtain a
decree from the governor-general ordering all arms to be surrendered,
and so they take away the shot-gun. Tales patrols his fields with a
bolo.
The bolo is taken from him on the pretext that it is too long and
therefore comes within the prohibition of the decree about arms. Tales
patrols his fields with an ax.
Then the tulisanes come and capture him and hold him for five hundred
pesos ransom.
To get the money, Juli sells herself into slavery in the neighboring
town. It is not called by that name, her servitude; but that is what it
amounts to.
She is engaged to a young man whom she dearly loves. The sale of
herself is likely to end her chance of marriage.
With the money so raised, her father is ransomed. He comes home to find
the friars’ agent and the new tenant walking over the fields that with
so much labor the Tales family has cleared.
Tales steals a revolver and joins the tulisanes. That night the friars’
agent and the new tenant and the new tenant’s wife are murdered. [150]
The substance of this story, as you perceive, is taken from the
experiences of the tenants of Calamba, among them Rizal’s own folk.
There is terrible irony in a description of how the governor-general
governs; how he transacts business and promotes the welfare of the
Islands. He has been on a hunting expedition in which he has shot
nothing and returns ill tempered to Los Baños, where he has his bath,
drinks his cocoanut milk, and sits down to a game of cards with three
friars. From this reasonable occupation his chief secretary tries to
divert his attention to matters of public business. This annoys the
governor-general.
“The petition about sporting arms,” suggests the secretary.
“Forbidden!” says the governor-general and goes on playing. The
secretary tries to intimate that this is not wise. He only arouses the
wrath of the executive.
The schoolmaster at Tiani has petitioned for a better location for his
school. The old store-room he is using has no roof: he has bought with
his own funds books and pictures, and he wishes them not to be ruined.
“I’ve heard several complaints against this schoolmaster,” says his
Excellency. “I think the best thing would be to suspend him.”
“Suspended!” [151] says the secretary.
“In the future,” says the governor-general, “all that complain will be
suspended.”
The well known fact is developed that there are not nearly enough
school-houses. Somebody suggests that the cockpits might be used for
schools when not needed for the more exalted purpose to which they are
dedicated. Horror meets the proposal to interfere, for the sake of mere
education, with reasonable sport and with the Government’s revenue.
It is probably the worst Government in the world.
At the end of the card game the secretary whispers to his Excellency
that that woman is around again, the daughter of Cabesang Tales, with
her petition. When Tales fled to the tulisanes the authorities, true to
form, arrested his aged father in his stead and now hold him in prison.
His Excellency looked at him with an expression of impatience and
rubbed his hand across his broad forehead. “Carambas! Can’t one be
left to eat one’s breakfast in peace?”
“This is the third day she has come. She’s a poor girl——”
The governor-general scratched the back of his ear and said, “Oh,
go along! Have the secretary make out an order to the lieutenant of
the Civil Guard for the old man’s release. They sha’n’t say that
we’re not clement and merciful.”
He looked at Ben-Zayb. The journalist winked. [152]
You can see that it is cartoon-making with a vengeance. The mirth is
savage. It gives one the shivers. This man taught the methods of peace
and rejected every suggestion that reform could be won by physical
violence. Yet the way he was walking is clear. In ten years if he had
kept on he would himself have been leading an insurrection. It has
always been so; in the cloister the sweet gentle spirit dreaming of
oppression overcome by reason, and in the streets rude weapons beating
off the shackles.
As Simoun the jeweler, Ibarra brings dramatic vengeance upon the head
of Father Salvi. In Manila is an American prestidigitator who is
exhibiting the trick known as the talking head. In this instance the
head is supposed to be that of an ancient Egyptian. In the midst of
gruesome settings to enhance the effect, it tells to an audience in
which Salvi is seated the story of Maria Clara, disguised as an event
of four thousand years ago. Salvi, conscience-stricken, falls in a fit.
[153]
Simoun’s purpose from the beginning has been to excite the people to an
uprising by which he hopes to win his revenge on friars and Government
alike and to free Maria Clara from the nunnery where she has been
virtually a prisoner since Ibarra’s arrest, as told in “Noli Me
Tangere.” The actual situation in the Islands is illuminated by
picturing Simoun as telling some persons that the insurrection is
desired by the governor-general to free himself from the friars, and
telling others that the friars are planning it to rid themselves of the
governor-general. In the chaos through which the social order was
drifting, either story was plausible. Simoun in his ceaseless
intriguing has manœuvered within his power Quiroga, an influential
Chinaman, also a type in those days, who has secret and unseemly
dealings with the Government. Through this connection Simoun is able to
have his rifles passed through the custom-house as some of Quiroga’s
illicit importations. He spreads his nets and lays his plans, tutors
his accomplices, distributes his arms, and when all is ready for his
explosion he is stunned with the news that so far as Maria Clara is
concerned it is too late. She is dead in the convent.
There are two other love-stories in the book, both unhappy, both
reflexes of Rizal’s own great unhappiness.
One is of Basilio and Juli. Basilio is the son of Sisa, the native
woman in “Noli Me Tangere,” driven insane by misfortunes and
persecutions; Juli is the daughter of Cabesang Tales, driven into
brigandage by the exactions of the friars.
So slight a thing as a frolic of students brings Basilio and Juli to
their tragedy. Some of the students have a supper. It is innocent and
insignificant, but the spies watch it. That night pasquinades are
pasted upon the doors of the university, pasquinades that the nervous
authorities deem seditious. To overwrought minds the bad verses and
cheap jocularity of these compositions indicate that the treason must
be connected with the students’ supper. Therefore, arrest all the
students. The order includes Basilio, who had not attended the fiesta,
and whose rooms when searched yield nothing but text-books on medicine.
In the rural region where Juli is living, terrible reports are current
as to the fate of these students. At one moment they are condemned to
be shot; at another the sentence has already been carried out. Then
comes news that with the help of influential and wealthy relatives they
hope to escape the death-penalty; all except Basilio, who has no
wealthy friends nor influence of any kind.
There is in the town where Juli lives a friar, Father Camorra, of great
power in the Government. An old woman urges Juli to go to the convento
[154] and beg the intercession of Father Camorra. A word from him will
be enough to save Basilio’s life. Juli knows well enough what is the
real nature of the sacrifice demanded of her; so many a Filipino girl
has walked or been dragged along that road to destruction. The reports
about the students grow worse. At last it appears that Basilio has been
condemned to death and in twenty-four hours will stand before the
firing-squad. Not a hope remains except through the intercession of
Father Camorra. The old woman beseeches; still Juli refuses. At last
she is forced to the door of the convento. That night a woman,
screaming wildly, throws herself from an upper window of the house.
When help comes to her she is dead. The body is recognized as that of
Juli. [155]
Basilio escapes the executioner. When he learns of the fate of Juli he
joins Simoun, the disguised Ibarra, who has tried in vain to interest
him in the plans for a revolution.
The other story concerns Isagani, type of the educated and ambitious
young Filipino, and Paulita, type of the exquisite native beauty.
Isagani is deeply in love. Nevertheless, he puts fidelity to his
country above even the idol of his heart. He is a leader among the
discontented students. They do not think of sedition but only of
reforms peacefully achieved, the Rizal idea of progress. An opportunity
arising, Isagani speaks with the greatest frankness to Father
Fernandez, a Dominican friar, and one of the instructors at the
university. Their conversation gives the author a chance to expose the
defects in the system of higher education—so called. He does more than
expose it; he blasts and withers it. [156] Isagani never hesitates to
speak his opinions about these things, though always professing perfect
loyalty. He is arrested with the other students in the dog-day fit that
has seized upon the authorities. At the news the relatives of Paulita
insist that she shall cast over a lover so notorious and so dangerous.
It is Rizal and Leonora again. Paulita yields to them; she allows
herself to be engaged to Isagani’s rival and the date is fixed for her
wedding. It is the date that Simoun selects for the consummation of his
plot. Basilio agrees to help him.
Paulita’s relatives are rich; they have invited the most eminent
persons in the colony, including the governor-general himself. Simoun,
the wealthy jeweler, will be there. He has arranged with bands of
tulisanes and certain discontented peasants to gather on that date to
attack the city. An explosion like the firing of a cannon is to be
their signal.
The guests come bearing or sending beautiful gifts. Simoun presents a
lamp of strange and beautiful design—burning. In it is a charge of
dynamite sufficient to blow up the house and all in it. This will
furnish the signal for the attack. He has told this to Basilio. Outside
the house of festival, Isagani lingers, hoping to catch one farewell
glimpse of the sweetheart he has lost. Basilio sees him and tries to
lead him away before the explosion. Isagani refuses to move. In despair
Basilio tells him what is afoot about the lamp. Isagani, overwhelmed
with horror at the thought that the woman he loves is about to perish,
runs into the house, seizes the lighted lamp, throws it into the river,
and follows it there before any one has a chance to stop him. [157]
Great excitement follows, in which something of the plot is revealed;
and Simoun is unmasked, but not until he has had a chance to escape. He
is pursued and wounded. He dies in the house of a Filipino family where
he has found refuge. On his death-bed he confesses to a priest his real
name and story. [158]
“God will forgive you, Señor Simoun,” says the priest. “He knows that
we are fallible. He has seen that you have suffered, and in ordaining
that the chastisement of your faults should come as death from the very
ones you have instigated to crime, we can see His infinite mercy. He
has frustrated your plans one by one, the best conceived, first by the
death of Maria Clara, then by a lack of preparation, then in some
mysterious way. Let us bow to His will and render Him thanks!”
“According to you, then,” feebly responded the sick man, “His will
is that these Islands——”
“Should continue in the condition in which they suffer?” continued
the priest, seeing that the other hesitated. “I don’t know, sir, I
can’t read the thought of the Inscrutable. I know that he has not
abandoned those peoples who in their supreme moments have trusted
in Him and made Him the judge of their cause. I know His arm has
never failed when, justice long trampled upon and every recourse
gone, the oppressed have taken up the sword to fight for home and
wife and children, for their inalienable rights, which, as the
German poet says, shine ever there above, unextinguished and
inextinguishable, like the eternal stars themselves. No, God is
justice; He cannot abandon His cause, the cause of liberty, without
which no justice is possible.”
Nothing could be plainer: Rizal is enforcing with a final warning the
lesson of his book.
“Why, then, has He denied me His aid?” asked the sick man in a
voice charged with bitter complaint.
“Because you chose means that He could not sanction,” was the
severe reply. “The glory of saving a country is not for him that
has contributed to its ruin. You have believed that what crime and
iniquity have defiled and deformed another crime and another
iniquity can purify and redeem. Wrong! Hate never produces anything
but monsters; crime never produces anything but criminals. Love
alone realizes wonderful works; virtue alone can save! No, if our
country is ever to be free it will not be through vice and crime;
it will not be so by corrupting its sons, deceiving some and
bribing others; no! Redemption presupposes virtue, virtue
sacrifice, and sacrifice love!”
“Well, I accept your explanation,” rejoined the sick man, after a
pause. “I have been mistaken, but, because I have been mistaken,
will that God deny liberty to a people and yet save many who are
much worse criminals than I am? What is my mistake compared to the
crimes of our rulers? Why has that God to give more heed to my
iniquity than to the cries of so many innocents? Why has He not
stricken me down and then made the people triumph? Why does He let
so many worthy and just ones suffer and look complacently upon
their tortures?”
“The just and the worthy must suffer in order that their ideas may
be known and extended! You must shake or shatter the vase to spread
its perfume; you must smite the rock to get the spark! There is
something providential in the persecutions of tyrants, Señor
Simoun!”
“I knew it,” murmured the sick man, “and therefore I encouraged the
tyranny.”
“Yes, my friend, but more corrupt influences than anything else
were spread. You fostered the social rottenness without sowing an
idea. From this fermentation of vices loathing alone could spring,
and if anything were born overnight it would be at best a mushroom,
for mushrooms only can spring spontaneously from filth. True it is
that the vices of the government are fatal to it; they cause its
death, but they kill also the society in whose bosom they are
developed. An immoral government presupposes a demoralized people,
a conscienceless administration, greedy and servile citizens in the
settled parts, outlaws and brigands in the mountains. Like master,
like slave! Like government, like country!”
A brief pause ensued, broken at length by the sick man’s voice.
“Then, what can be done?”
“Suffer and work!”
“Suffer—work!” echoed the sick man bitterly. “Ah, it’s easy to say
that, when you are not suffering, when the work is rewarded. If
your God demands such sacrifices from man, man who can scarcely
count upon the present and doubts the future, if you had seen what
I have, the miserable, the wretched, suffering unspeakable tortures
for crimes they have not committed, murdered to cover up the faults
and incapacity of others, poor fathers of families torn from their
homes to work to no purpose upon highways that are destroyed each
day and seem only to serve for sinking families into want. Ah, to
suffer, to work, is the will of God! Convince them that their
murder is their salvation, that their work is the prosperity of the
home! To suffer, to work! What God is that?”
“A very just God, Señor Simoun,” replied the priest. “A God who
chastises our lack of faith, our vices, the little esteem in which
we hold dignity and the civic virtues. We tolerate vice, we make
ourselves its accomplices, at times we applaud it; and it is just,
very just that we suffer the consequences, that our children suffer
them. It is the God of liberty, Señor Simoun, who obliges us to
love it, by making the yoke heavy for us—a God of mercy, of equity,
who while He chastises us betters us and only grants prosperity to
him who has merited it through his efforts. The school of suffering
tempers, the arena of combat strengthens the soul.
“I do not mean to say that our liberty will be secured at the
sword’s point, for the sword plays but little part in modern
affairs, but that we must secure it by making ourselves worthy of
it, by exalting the intelligence and the dignity of the individual,
by loving justice, right, and greatness, even to the extent of
dying for them; and when a people reaches that height God will
provide a weapon, the idols will be shattered, the tyranny will
crumble like a house of cards, and liberty will shine out like the
first dawn.
“Our ills we owe to ourselves alone, so let us blame no one. If
Spain should see that we were less complaisant with tyranny and
more disposed to struggle and suffer for our rights, Spain would be
the first to grant us liberty, because when the fruit of the womb
reaches maturity woe unto the mother who would stifle it! So, while
the Filipino people has not sufficient energy to proclaim, with
head erect and bosom bared its rights to social life, and to
guarantee it with its sacrifices, with its own blood; while we see
our countrymen in private life ashamed within themselves, hear the
voice of conscience roar in rebellion and protest, yet in public
life keep silence or even echo the words of him who abuses them in
order to mock the abused; while we see them wrap themselves up in
their egotism and with a forced smile praise the most iniquitous
actions, begging with their eyes a portion of the booty—why grant
them liberty? With Spain or without Spain they would always be the
same, and perhaps worse! Why independence, if the slaves of to-day
will be the tyrants of to-morrow? And that they will be such is not
to be doubted, for he who submits to tyranny loves it.
“Señor Simoun, when our people is unprepared, when it enters the
fight through fraud and force, without a clear understanding of
what it is doing, the wisest attempts will fail, and better that
they do fail, since why commit the wife to the husband if he does
not sufficiently love her, if he is not ready to die for her?”
Padre Florentino felt the sick man catch and press his hand; so he
became silent, hoping that the other might speak, but he merely
felt a stronger pressure of the hand, heard a sigh, and then
profound silence reigned in the room. Only the sea, whose waves
were rippled by the night breeze, as though awaking from the heat
of the day, sent its hoarse roar, its eternal chant, as it rolled
against the jagged rocks. The moon, now free from the sun’s
rivalry, peacefully commanded the sky, and the trees of the forest
bent down toward one another, telling their ancient legends in
mysterious murmurs borne on the wings of the wind.
The sick man said nothing; so Padre Florentino, deeply thoughtful,
murmured: “Where are the youth who will consecrate their golden
hours, their illusions, and their enthusiasm to the welfare of
their native land? Where are the youth who will generously pour out
their blood to wash away so much shame, so much crime, so much
abomination? Pure and spotless must the victim be that the
sacrifice may be acceptable! Where are you, youth, who will embody
in yourselves the vigor of life that has left our veins, the purity
of ideas that has been contaminated in our brains, the fire of
enthusiasm that has been quenched in our hearts? We await you, O
youth! Come, for we await you!”
Feeling his eyes moisten, he withdrew his hand from that of the
sick man, arose, and went to the window to gaze out upon the wide
surface of the sea. He was drawn from his meditation by gentle raps
at the door. It was the servant asking if he should bring a light.
When the priest returned to the sick man and looked at him in the
light of the lamp, motionless, his eyes closed, the hand that had
pressed his lying open and extended along the edge of the bed, he
thought for a moment that he was sleeping, but noticing that he was
not breathing touched him gently, and then realized that he was
dead. His body had already commenced to turn cold. The priest fell
upon his knees and prayed.
So Ibarra dies with his revenge unaccomplished, and the priest takes
the box in which the dead man’s great wealth is supposed to be
contained and without opening it throws it into the sea.
Only an artist would have thought of such an ending.
CHAPTER XIII
THE SAFE-CONDUCT
Failure was all he reaped at Madrid in his efforts to win some measure
of justice for his family, a fact that hardly could have astonished him
then and seems but normal now. In the seats of authority was no man
that loved justice so much as he feared the huge political machine set
up by the friars and administered (through particularly appropriate
selection) by the ruffian Weyler. Early in 1891, Rizal returned to
Paris, where he revisited his former friends, and so passed to Ghent.
There he settled himself to the finishing of “El Filibusterismo” and
worked without further interruption until the book was done and on its
way to the publisher.
Powerful influences now seemed to draw him again to the East; it is
likely that but for his book he would have gone thither direct from
Madrid when he learned how little help he might expect from the gross
and inert government. The situation of his family caused him a
harrowing anxiety. [159] It was for his sake that they were subjected
to the abominable persecutions of the petty tyrants of the existing
System. His soul revolted at the idea that they should be thus
tormented while he was safely out of the range of his enemies’ venom.
After his consultations with the Filipinos in Madrid the gloomy outlook
in the Philippines was more than before a burden on his thought. He
must have known that this time, as he had forecasted in his writings,
revolt would be more than local. He could hardly hope to be allowed to
land in the Islands, but Hong-Kong was a convenient point from which to
watch developments and to put forth his influence; and as to his family
he began to have a purpose that if carried out would take them beyond
the power of Spanish officers to hector and to wound. In October, 1891,
he sailed for Hong-Kong, where he hoped to establish himself in his
profession, to gather his family, and to be ready to help his
countrymen with the cautionary wisdom of which he held them to be most
in need.
His hopes of professional success were better founded than he knew.
Almost at once he stepped into a large practice. This is not the usual
experience of new physicians in a new field, but his fame as an oculist
had gone before him. For the first time in his life he had unpledged
money in his purse. He sent to the Philippines for his sister Lucia,
who happened then not to be in jail nor exiled nor pinioned to the
miseries of procrastinating law-courts, and in her company he tasted
something of the novelty of ease. The project he had half formed about
the rescue of his harassed relatives took him in the following spring
to Borneo. As it seemed to him virtually certain that his enemies would
continue to pursue any one known to be near or dear to him, and there
was no career for them in Hong-Kong, he purposed to found a new
homestead for them under another flag. They were a numerous family, and
inasmuch as the peculiar ideas of revenge we have found to be current
in the Spanish colony made his second cousin or his great-grandmother a
quite feasible substitute for himself in the way of vicarious
atonement, it was necessary to remove them all. In North Borneo the
British authorities offered him on attractive terms an area of fertile
land adapted to his purposes. He went to look at it, found it in all
respects suitable, and resolved to carry out his plan of a Rizal family
refuge. [160]
From his happy country of those days not a soul could depart without
the sanction of the Government. To secure this for anybody connected
with him would be hard enough; even for an individual and a temporary
absence like Lucia’s it was hard. How much harder it would be to rescue
a whole tribe, and all so hated! Revenge was not so to be cheated, nor
the account of “Noli Me Tangere” left unsettled. If passports were to
be had at all, a personal explanation and appeal offered the best
chance. This he determined to attempt, if he could have some reasonable
promise of safety, being more inclined to go because thereby he might
again see his father and mother.
It was the Philippines in one of the recurrent spasms of reform that he
must now approach—sure sign in itself that a storm was brewing. A new
governor-general, one Eulogio Despujol, expert, as was afterward
proved, in the unctuous shaking of hands and the agile escape from
promises, had arrived with much éclat and promulgated a liberal
program. Rizal wrote to him, asking for permission and a safe-conduct
to visit Manila.
In reply he received through the Spanish consul at Hong-Kong a passport
and an unequivocal assurance of his safety in the Philippine Islands.
So equipped, he sailed with his sister Lucia, June 26, 1892. [161]
For this he has been much criticized on the ground that to return to
Manila was inconsistent with his former experiences there and virtual
deportation thence. If any one had been furnished with convincing
knowledge of the duplicity of the Philippine Government, surely it was
Rizal. By the same token, it was said, he knew well the murderous
attitude of the governing class toward him, and to go deliberately to
the thrusting of his head into those jaws was madness. These, again,
are but the strictures of ignorance. Rizal returned to the Philippines
under a compelling sense of duty. At whatsoever cost to himself he must
try to rescue his family from the tireless pursuit of the Interests he
had offended, and the North Borneo project was clearly the way to
achieve this. But it was a plan about which the Government would be
certain to object. If nothing else were handy, there was always the
argument that it would draw inhabitants of the Islands into an alien
territory, and this reasoning could be met only by face to face
encounter with the governor-general.
But Rizal was never deceived as to the nature of the trap into which he
was walking. Weighing all the chances he knew he was not likely to
emerge alive. Therefore, he prepared and left with a friend two
documents [162] to be made public if his enemies should succeed in
killing him.
The first of these was addressed “To the Filipinos” and constituted his
farewell to the people he had served so loyally, and a last confession
of his faith. Men still study it for other reasons than he imagined. It
is not only an expression of his professed creed but a revelation of
his soul and inmost thinkings on life and death. He shows here that in
his mind he had made no stranger of the great mystery but had looked
upon it and without misgivings. There is no bravado in his attitude
toward it; he is unafraid because he has come to the logical conclusion
that there is nothing about death to be afraid of. When he shall go and
how do not concern a man, but only that his death shall mean something
for the general cause. In this spirit he begins his letter: [163]
The step I am about to take is undoubtedly attended with peril, and
I need not say to you that I take it after long deliberation. I
understand that nearly all my friends are opposed to it; but I know
also that hardly any one else comprehends what is in my heart. I
cannot live on and see so many persons suffer injustice and
persecution on my account; I cannot bear longer the fact that my
sisters and their families are treated like criminals. I prefer
death and cheerfully relinquish my life to free so many innocent
persons from such great wrong.
I am aware that at present the future of our country pivots in some
degree around me, that at my death many of its enemies will feel
triumph, and consequently many of them are now wishing for my fall.
What of it?
I hold duties of conscience above all else. I have obligations to
the families that suffer, to my aged parents whose sighs strike me
to the heart. If with my death I can secure for them happiness and
a peaceful home in their native land, I am ready. So far as the
country is concerned, I am all my parents have, but the country has
many, many more sons that can take my place and do my work better
than I.
Besides, I wish to show those that deny us patriotism that we know
how to die for duty and principle.
What matters death, if one dies for what one loves, for native land
and those dear to one?
If I thought that I were the only resource of the policy of
progress in the Philippines, and were I convinced that my
countrymen were about to make use of my services, perhaps I should
hesitate about this step; but there are others that can take my
place, and take it with advantage. Furthermore, there are probably
those that hold that I am not needed, and this is why I am not
utilized, but find myself reduced to inactivity.
Always I have loved our unhappy land, and I am sure I shall
continue to love it until my last moment, in case men prove unjust
to me. Life, career, happiness, I am ready to sacrifice for it.
Whatever my fate, I shall die blessing it and longing for the dawn
of its redemption.
The other document was a letter addressed to his parents, brothers, and
sisters. In it he said:
The affection I have ever professed for you suggests this step, and
time alone can tell whether it was wise. The wisdom of acts is
decided by their results, but whether these be favorable or
unfavorable, it may always be said that duty urged me; so if I die
in doing my duty it will not matter.
I realize how much suffering I have caused you; still I do not
regret what I have done. Rather, if I had to begin again I should
follow the same course, for it has been only duty. Gladly I go to
expose myself to peril. Not as an expiation for misdeeds (in this
matter I believe myself guiltless of any) but to complete my work I
offer myself an example of the doctrine I have preached.
A man ought to be ready to die for duty and his principles.
I hold fast to every idea I have advanced as to the condition and
future of our country. I shall willingly die for it and even more
willingly die to secure for you justice and peace. [164]
It was his destiny to be betrayed and lied to. He went forth with the
faith of the Government pledged to his safety. No sooner had the ship
that bore him from Hong-Kong hoisted her anchors than the Spanish
consul cabled to Governor-General Despujol that the victim was in the
trap; [165] whereupon in Manila an accusation was filed against him of
treason and sacrilege. It appeared that Rizal’s forebodings about his
fate were not fanciful; he was going into a den of wolves. When he and
his sister landed at Manila, a customs officer searched their baggage
and pretended to find among Lucia’s possessions a package of
treasonable documents. The device is as old as tyranny and must have
suggested to La Fontaine one of his most famous fables. Here is the
officer showing certain papers and saying he found them in this trunk
or that valise. Who is to gainsay him? The victim protests that she
never saw the documents before. What is her statement worth against the
skilled vociferations of the officer? Rizal was right. In a country
operated as Spain operated the Philippines every man’s life was at the
mercy of any power that was able and wished to take it. [166]
In this instance the treasonable stuff was found, official superservice
asserted, in certain pillow-cases that Lucia had in her trunk. When all
was done, it consisted of a brief circular or tract entitled “The Poor
Friars.” Among reasoning men and enlightened systems of society,
treason is held to be a crime directed against Government; other
offenses may be committed by individuals against individuals, but for
these the police and the ordinary criminal code are enough. The
incendiary document Lucia was alleged to have brought in said nothing
against the Government. This is the fact that will strike the modern
reader as strangest of all. How can there be other treason or other
sedition than against Government? Yet in all this document is not a
word against anybody or thing except the friars and even as to the
friars speaks of but one order, and that in terms adults might smile at
but assuredly would never care to reread. Lest it should be thought
that any part of the description of the Insular Government attempted in
these pages is extravagant, here is the whole of this ferocious
document:
POOR FRIARS
A bank has just suspended payment; the New Oriental has just become
bankrupt.
Great losses in India. In the Island of Mauritius, to the South of
Africa [sic], cyclones and tempests have laid waste its riches,
swallowing more than 36,000,000 pesos. These 36,000,000 represented
the hopes, the savings, the well-being, and the future of numerous
individuals and families.
Among those that have suffered most we are able to mention the
Reverend Corporation of the Dominicans, which lost in this
catastrophe many hundreds of thousands. The exact amount is not
known because they handle so much money and have so many accounts
that it would be necessary to employ many accountants to calculate
the immense sums in transit.
But, neither should the friends of these sainted monks that hide
behind the cloak of poverty be downhearted nor should their enemies
feel triumphant.
To one and all we can say that they can be tranquil. The
Corporation still has many millions on deposit in the banks of
Hong-Kong, and even if all of those should fail, and even if all of
their many thousands of rented houses should be destroyed, still
there would be left the curates and the haciendas, there would
still remain the Filipinos always ready to answer their call for
alms. What are four or five hundred thousands? Why take the trouble
to run about the towns and ask alms to replace these losses? A year
ago, through the bad business administration of the cardinals, the
Pope lost 14,000,000 pesos of the money of St. Peter; the Pope, in
order to cover this deficit, called upon us and we took from our
“tampipis” the very last cent, because we knew that the Pope has
many worries; about five years ago he married off his niece
bestowing upon her a palace and 300,000 francs besides. Therefore,
generous Filipinos, make a brave effort and likewise help the
Dominicans.
However, these hundreds of thousands lost are not theirs, they
claim. How can they have this when they take a vow of poverty? They
are to be believed then, when, to protect themselves, they say this
money belongs to widows and orphans. Very likely some of it belongs
to the widows and orphans of Calamba, and who knows if not to their
murdered husbands? And the virtuous priests handle this money
solely as depositories to return it to them afterward righteously
with all interest when the day to render accounts arrives! Who
knows? Who better than they can take charge of collecting the few
household goods while the houses burn, the orphans and widows flee
without meeting hospitality, since others are prohibited from
offering them shelter, while the men are made prisoners and
prosecuted? Who has more bravery, more audacity, and more love for
humanity than the Dominicans?
But now the devil has carried off the money of the widows and the
orphans, and it is to be feared that he will carry away everything,
because when the devil begins the devil has to finish. Does not
that money set up a bad precedent?
If things are thus, we should recommend to the Dominicans that they
should exclaim as Job: “Naked I came from the womb of my mother
(Spain), and naked will I return to her; the devil gave, the devil
took away; blessed be the name of the Lord”!
Fr[aile] Jacinto.
Manila: Press of the Friends of the Country. [167]
Government in the Philippines had sunk so low that this could be deemed
seditious.
Nevertheless, for some days thereafter the trap was not sprung upon the
victims. Rizal with his sister went about the city, visiting old
friends. More than once he called upon Governor-General Despujol and
was rather astonished to find that his footing seemed to be secure upon
the dark and slippery precincts of Malacañan. In his usual frank way he
discussed with the governor-general the brand-new program of reforms,
commending most of their features and hoping for the best, as was
likewise his habit. Despujol, responding to all this, seemed equally
ingenuous. No one would have suspected that while he stressed so much
gracious hospitality he was but waiting for the most convenient season
to strike to death the man before him. Rizal pleaded in behalf of his
persecuted relatives. Despujol promised immunity for the father, but
not for the brother or sisters. Afterward he was willing to concede
even these favors. They discussed Rizal’s project of a settlement in
North Borneo, and the governor-general applied his veto. For this he
gave the expected reasons but never once the real one. He objected to
taking people out of the colony but said nothing about the wrath of the
friars if he should let their victims escape unhurt.
Rizal had long known well enough that the lack of unity among the
Filipinos was chief reason why they were enslaved and to keep up this
condition chief point in Spanish policy. “Divide and rule”—the good old
formula of the exploiter in all ages. To combat this he proposed an
organization that would bring together the most promising elements
among his people; a plan for it he had with him when he landed. It
included the full working constitution of a society to be called La
Liga Filipina, or Philippine League, of which the objects were declared
to be to better economic conditions, to spread education, to advance
the Philippine youth, and to defend by legal means persons oppressed,
wronged, or unjustly accused. He now called together his friends, [168]
explained the purposes of the league, and began to enroll members.
The real nature and front-parlor origin of this association [169] were
of a nature to occasion in these days only a mild surprise that anybody
could object to it, as may be observed from the following precepts
Rizal prepared for his fellow-members:
Don’t gamble.
Don’t be a drunkard.
Don’t break the laws.
Don’t be cruel in any way.
Don’t be a rabid partisan.
Don’t be merely a fault-finding critic.
Don’t put yourself in the way of humiliation.
Don’t treat any one with haughtiness or contempt.
Don’t condemn any man without first hearing his side.
Don’t abandon the poor man that has right on his side.
Don’t forget those that although worthy have come to want.
Don’t fail those without means that show application and ability.
Don’t associate with immoral persons or with persons of bad habits.
Don’t overlook the value to your country of new machinery and
industries.
Don’t cease at any time to work for the prosperity and welfare of
our native land.
CHAPTER XIV
THE EXILE OF DAPITAN
About this was nothing sinister, illegal, revolutionary, affrighting,
or incendiary, but the Spanish colony chose to view it with alarm. If
Rizal had organized a prayer meeting or a branch of the Young Men’s
Christian Association these nervous folk would have seen in it only
treason, stratagems, and spoils. On the Filipinos the effect was
different. To the deliberate judgment of the intelligentsia the plan of
the league appealed as the first practical suggestion of relief through
peaceful agitation. With a novel sensation of hope, they took it to
their bosoms. [170] Rapidly the membership increased; at last there was
a promise of union and directed effort. And then the powers that stood
behind the puppet governor-general and manipulated his movements
decided that the ripe time had come to spring the trap; before this
dangerous man should have back of him an organization able to realize
his dreams he must be put to silence. Despujol sent for Rizal, leaped
upon him as if from a machine with the leaflet, “The Poor Friars,” that
men said had been found in Lucia’s baggage, and without trial or
hearing ordered him to prison. From the spot where he stood in the
governor-general’s office a guard took him to Fort Santiago and thrust
him into a cell. Another generation will not believe that this was
done; and even in our own era, in which invasions of personal rights at
times of great public excitement are not unknown, an act of such rank
and impudent despotism seems improbable. There was not even a pretense
of any legal proceeding, no warrant, no magistrate, no commitment.
“Take this man to jail!” commands the governor-general. With an
obedient start the guard sweeps away the prisoner, helpless in a square
of rifles. It is enough to cause us to wonder if democracy and liberty
are or can be more than veneer upon any old frame of European monarchy
and whether time, in this conception of human society, must not
necessarily stand stock-still.
At Santiago guard was mounted [171] upon the mild reformer and man of
peace as if he had been some ferocious bandit captured red-handed and
likely to burst his bars. Sentinels stood day and night over his cell
door; no communication was allowed with his friends; and grown men in
the official service went through the theatrics of pretending that
there was danger of an attempt to rescue him.
The next day a decree was issued ordering his exile to Dapitan, a town
on the northeastern coast of the island of Mindanao. Upon what charge?
The charge of sacrilege and sedition made against him the day he sailed
from Hong-Kong, reinforced with Lucia’s damnable pillow-cases. On these
he had been adjudged guilty offhand, as one would drown cats or blind
puppies. He was not even allowed to know who were his accusers; for
that matter, he did not even know that he was accused. “This fellow has
committed sacrilege and sedition,” says some one in the ear of the
governor-general. “Exile him,” replies the governor-general, and signs
the order committing him to a living death. It is like the scene
between the governor-general and his secretary in “El Filibusterismo”;
if a man may have foreknowledge of his fate, Rizal had glimpsed this in
his novel.
There was the matter of the safe-conduct, the promise of protection,
given by this same governor-general, under which Rizal had left
Hong-Kong. It seems to have been not a feather-weight against the
Interests that cried for his blood. There need be no mystery as to the
source of these perfidies. Exile was the price Rizal paid for writing
“Noli Me Tangere”; the powers that now pushed him upon the savage coast
of Mindanao as an outcast sent there to die was the power of the
friars, enraged by these pictures of themselves. They demanded Rizal’s
blood; Despujol seems to have been incapable of the firing-squad and
only wicked enough to consent to exile.
A chorus of protest rose from the civilized world as soon as men
learned of this latest assault by a stupidly malignant Government upon
the foundation principles of modern liberty. In hugger-mugger Rizal
might be snatched away to banishment, but the time had gone by when
such things could continue to be hid. It was speedily known throughout
Europe that he had been decoyed from Hong-Kong by promises now shown to
have been deliberate inventions; that the governor-general had violated
his own safe-conduct; that, even if Lucia had possessed a seditious
document, proceedings should have lain against her and not against
Rizal; that in any society above that of the jungle he would have had a
hearing or some form of trial. Some such storm of resentment seems to
have been foreseen by Despujol. For the issue of the “Official Gazette”
that announced Rizal’s banishment he had prepared a long article
defending the Government’s course and describing Rizal as a dangerous
person. But he sufficiently betrayed himself by writing to the governor
of Santiago prison a personal letter instructing him to take every
precaution that Rizal should not see this number of the “Gazette,” and
beyond this in cowardice and infamy it seemed hardly possible to go.
[172]
For three days the victim of the aroused wrath of the governing class
lay in prison, being still denied any communication with friend or
relative. Then at night he was hustled aboard a steamer and started for
Dapitan.
So far as we can determine now, even in these conditions he lost
nothing of that serenity that has made him so admirable to some
investigators and so inexplicable to others. “Sustained and soothed by
an unfaltering trust” seems to have been literally the state of this
brown man from the ends of the earth. Many a white man far less tried
might have envied his self-possession. Dwell with some patience and
care, if you will, upon this his own record of his arrest and
deportation and see if you do not deem this remarkable that in such
conditions not a complaint, not a suggestion of resentment or of
bitterness, not a hint of fear occurs in his narrative. It is a plain,
blunt story written only for his friends. Here if anywhere he would
have exhibited wrath; and the story reads with a kind of chill, so
perfect is the unconcern. You can hardly say it reads as if it were
written about the sufferings of somebody else. For anybody else in the
like conditions this man would have made protest. Concerning himself he
had nothing to say except to record the facts. Here is what his
memorandum says of all this:
Wednesday he [the governor-general] asked me if I persisted in my
intention of returning to Hong-Kong. I told him “yes.” After some
conversation he said that I had brought political circulars in my
baggage. I replied that I had not. He asked me who was the owner of
the roll of pillows and petates [173] with my baggage. I said that
they belonged to my sister. He told me that because of them he was
going to send me to Fort Santiago. Don Ramón Despujol, his nephew
and aide, took me in one of the palace carriages. At Fort Santiago,
Don Enrique Villamor, the commander, received me. The room assigned
to me was an ordinary chamber. It had a bed, a dozen chairs, a
table, a wash-stand, and a mirror. There were three windows. One,
without bars, looked out on a court; another had bars, and
overlooked the wall and beach; the third served also as a door and
had a padlock. Two artillerymen were on guard as sentinels. These
had orders to fire on any one that tried to make signs from the
beach. I could neither write nor converse with the officer of the
guard.
Don Enrique Villamor, the commander of the fort, gave me books from
the library.
Each day the corporal of the guard proved to be a sergeant. They
cleaned the room every morning. For breakfast, I had coffee with
milk, a roll, and coffee-cake. Luncheon at 12:30 was of four
courses. Dinner was at 8:30 and similar to the luncheon. Commander
Villamor’s orderly waited on me.
On Thursday, the 14th, about 5:30 or 6 P.M., the nephew notified me
that at 10 that night I should sail for Dapitan. I prepared my
baggage, and at 10 was ready, but as no one came to get me, I went
to sleep.
At 12:15, the aide arrived with the same carriage that had brought
me there. By way of Santa Lucia Gate, they took me to the Malecon,
where there were General Ahumada and some other people. Another
aide and two of the Guardia Veterana were awaiting me in a boat.
The Cebu sailed in the morning at 9. They gave me a good
state-room, on the upper deck. Above the doors could be read,
“Chief.” Next my cabin was that of Captain Delgras, who had charge
of the party.
Ten soldiers from each branch of the military service comprised the
expedition. There were artillery, infantry of five regiments,
carbineers, cavalry, and engineers, and the Civil Guard.
We were carrying prisoners, loaded with chains, among whom were a
sergeant and a corporal, both Europeans. The former was to be shot
for having ordered the tying up of his superior officer who had
misbehaved while in Mindanao. The officer, for having let himself
be tied, was dismissed from the service. The soldiers who obeyed
orders, were sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment.
It appears that the misbehavior noted here by Rizal consisted of the
seduction of the sergeant’s wife by the officer, and the tying up of
the officer was the sergeant’s revenge. It is an interesting side-light
on the prevailing code that the officer was dismissed from the service
for allowing himself to be tied but not for dishonoring the poor
sergeant, whose recompense was to be shot. The privates were to be
punished for laying hands upon an officer, although they were but
obeying orders. [174]
I ate in my state-room, the food being the same as the officers
had. I always had a sentinel and a corporal on guard. Every night
Captain Delgras took me for a promenade till 9 o’clock. We passed
along the east coast of Mindanao and the west coast of Panay. We
came to Dapitan on Sunday at 7 in the evening.
Captain Delgras and three artillerymen accompanied me in a boat
rowed by eight sailors. There was a heavy sea.
The beach seemed very gloomy. We were in the dark, except for our
lantern, which showed a roadway grown with weeds.
In the town we met the governor or commandant, Captain Ricardo
Carnicero. There was also a Spanish exile, and the practicante,
[175] Don Cosme. We went to the town hall, which was a large
building.
That is all there is of this laconic narrative. Under the conditions it
can hardly be equaled for philosophical phlegm. “The beach seemed very
gloomy”; “As no one came to get me, I went to sleep.” It sounds like
casual notes on a holiday jaunt. In point of fact, he was in danger at
all times of assassination and knew it well. He must have rather
wondered at his fortune when he saw the beach at Dapitan and realized
that he had arrived without being murdered. [176]
It was a little town on the border of a savage country, known to be
unhealthful, and at that time so difficult of access from Manila that
he might have been nearer at Yokohama. It is charitable but hardly
necessary to believe that the men that consigned him to such a place
were unaware of its repute. With so little concealment they had sought
in other ways for his life, we have no reason to think now of a sudden
they had acquired mercy. To a thousand places more salubrious he might
as easily have been sent; none would satisfy them but this.
At Dapitan were a military station, a convento, and several priests.
Rizal was informed that if he would make a declaration of sympathy and
admiration for Spain he could reside at the convento with the priests.
Even for that privilege, dear to an intellectual man, hungry for the
company of his educated fellows, he would not lay perjury on his soul.
[177] Strange as the temptation seems to us in these days, the tempters
knew well what they had in view. With such a declaration they could
nullify much of Rizal’s influence upon his countrymen and possibly
allay something of the spirit of revolt that on all sides was rising in
the colony.
To the commandant’s house, accordingly, he was assigned. It was but
rude commons and a primitive environment. The sudden and cold plunge
from the place of respect he had held in Europe and his profitable
position in Hong-Kong would have overwhelmed a weaker spirit. Rizal
accepted the stern mutations with the unruffled composure that was
always his strong anchor in whatsoever difficulties. “No man bears
sorrow better,” says the antique Roman of himself; but you would not
look for a recrudescence of Marcus Brutus in a Malay of the nineteenth
century.
In the same spirit he now arranged his time upon a schedule after his
invariable custom, and resumed cheerfully a life of study and work.
Under the parole he had given that he would make no attempt to escape,
he was allowed to go about as he pleased and without observation, for
it is singular that this traitor and dangerous character was implicitly
trusted even by his enemies so far as any question of personal honor
was concerned. He had never a guard in Dapitan. Not only so, but the
commandants, one after another, and all the soldiery, from private to
highest officers, fell under the potent charm of his manner and became
his friends and admirers. The commandants were frequently changed. Each
in turn came to Dapitan warned against the perilous prisoner there and
therefore bristling with dislike; each went away swearing he was the
prince of good fellows and sorry for his fate.
At all times he was the most industrious of exiles; he must have had a
spirit akin to the genius of perpetual motion. Day after day he plunged
into the woods to study the animal life of the region, collect
specimens and write elaborate notes about shells, bugs, crawling
things, trees, and flowers. He explored the coasts of Mindanao and
visited the native villages. With evident enthusiasm he revived his
ethnological pleasures and collected native implements, weapons and
manufactures, many of which from his hands are now in the museum of
Dresden, for instance. [178] True to his natural inclinings, one of his
first employments had been to look about him at the chances the
children of that region had to gain even the rudiments of education.
Finding they had next to nothing, he gathered them about him and began
to teach. He was also busy at times with his professional
ministrations. Patients began to seek him from Manila, from Hong-Kong,
and even from more distant places, so great was his reputation as an
oculist. With the fees they paid him he embarked upon beneficent
enterprises that revealed another reserve in his resourceful mind.
The first of these was a lighting system for Dapitan; the next,
waterworks, which he devised, planned, and superintended in person,
going back to the engineering lore he had learned at the Ateneo and
then laid aside. Much of the construction was difficult, and engineers
still wonder at the skill and courage he showed in meeting its
problems. He and his workmen were without the proper tools; they must
improvise their own materials, and bring the water a long distance over
valleys and around hills; but they conquered every obstacle. [179]
When this task was done he bought him a tract of land close by the
town, built a house on it, and established there adequate quarters for
his school.
This may be a good place to say what this singular person was in some
of the sciences to which he gave so much of himself. As a physician,
while still a student at Madrid University, he had made commentaries of
remarkable merit, “Apuntes de Obstetricia” and “Apuntes Clinicos.” As
an ophthalmologist he seemed to win at once to distinction as soon as
he left the university. This Dr. de Weckert of Paris, to whom he went
first, was of too great repute and too well supplied with candidates to
have selected him for chief laboratory assistant if he had not been of
unusual attainments. It appears that de Weckert was so much impressed
with this brown man from Malaya that they began a warm friendship that
lasted until Rizal’s death, and so long as he remained in Paris he was
the great oculist’s favorite companion and collaborateur. In
Heidelberg, Leipzig, and Berlin he was the associate and assistant of
men like Galezowsky and Schulzer. In the few months that elapsed
between his first return to the Philippines and his departure thence at
the veiled order of Terrero, he received in fees more than five
thousand pesos, a sum equivalent to about fifteen thousand pesos of the
present day. At Hong-Kong, for the short time he was there, his office
was overrun with patients from all that part of the world. As we have
seen, they followed him even to far Dapitan. One of them was an
Englishman that made him a present of five hundred pesos, brown man and
Malay as he was.
As an ethnologist, he was an honored member of the leading ethnological
societies of Europe, and his close friendship with Blumentritt we have
noted. Dr. Meyer, director of the Royal Saxony Ethnographical Institute
of Dresden, regarded him with admiration as a great scholar and great
investigator. With Meyer and with Virchow he was on terms of
confidential intimacy. These were men in whom ordinarily confidence was
a plant of slow growth. They were drawn to and believed in Rizal
because he had mastered their specialty and could meet them in it on
their own footing. All those rare and abstruse works of Müller,
Perschel, Ratzel, and the other great leaders in ethnological research
he knew well [180] and, what was better, he had ideas of his own about
them. Not only then but long before; he had been mulling over
ethnological principles while he was teaching Filipino boys at the
Ateneo the best way to land on the solar plexus of a young Spanish
bully.
As a naturalist he enriched the museums of Europe and Manila with
hundreds of specimens of his gathering and preparing. Flowers, plants,
crustaceans and all forms of animal life attracted his study. The
German museums were so well pleased with his work that they offered
him, while he was in Dapitan, a remunerative salary to devote himself
entirely to gathering specimens for them, and they still exhibit his
collections among their most valued possessions. Three creatures,
previously unknown to science, now bear his name because he discovered
them. One is a frog called the Rhacoperus Rizali; the second is a
coleopter called the Apogonis Rizali; and the third, a dragon called
the Draco Rizali.
In philology, Rizal won the friendship and esteem of Dr. Reinhold Rost,
said to have been the greatest philologist of the nineteenth century,
and was himself one of its most wonderful polyglots. While he was at
Dapitan, to baffle the censor, he wrote a letter to his sister that he
began in colloquial German, carried on in colloquial English, and
concluded in colloquial French. [181] But this was for him a most
trifling exploit and hardly worth noticing. Besides these and Spanish,
of which he was a master, he spoke Latin, Greek, Arab, Sanskrit,
Hebrew, Swedish, Dutch, Catalan, Italian, Chinese, Japanese,
Portuguese, Russian, Tagalog, Visayan, and the Moro dialects of
Dapitan. One of his papers, a scientific treatise on the Visayan
language, was read before the Ethnographical Society of Berlin. He was
associated with Dr. Meyer and Dr. Blumentritt in the annotation of a
Chinese codicil of the Middle Ages. While at Dapitan he began to write
a scientific Tagalog grammar and a treatise on the resemblances between
Tagalog and Visayan speech. To amuse himself he would sometimes adorn a
title-page or drawing with quotations in Hebrew, Sanskrit, Japanese,
Spanish, and English.
As to other sciences, for example, he excelled in chemistry. Before he
was twenty-one he had obtained degrees as surveyor and agricultural
expert. He was an excellent engineer and so scientific an educator that
when the Philippine Republic came to be erected the plan of the
educational department and work was taken from his writings. In Leipzig
he went deeply into psychology, in which he was fellow-student with
Hugo Münsterberg. While he was at Dapitan he learned how to sail a
ship, and taught their trade to the fishermen, because he showed them
how to make and how to handle a better kind of net.
Incidentally, he had the makings of a great journalist.
Concerning his place as a poet, most of his poetry was written in
Spanish and after the approved Spanish manner. Like other poetry it is
virtually incapable of translation. The thought may be indicated but
not the melodic significance, so important in Spanish, and of which he
was a facile master. How impossible it is to reproduce this in
translation is apparent to one that will compare the five-line Spanish
stanza as Rizal left it and the best English version of the same
stanza. A poem that he wrote at Dapitan, “My Retreat,” [182] dedicated
to his mother, is an adequate expression of the reverent attitude
toward nature that he managed to carry with him unimpaired in so many
vicissitudes and long inhumations in the sordid dust of cities. This is
the first stanza in Mr. Derbyshire’s version: [183]
By the spreading beach where the sands are soft and fine,
At the foot of the mount in its mantle of green,
I have built my hut in the pleasant grove’s confine
From the forest seeking peace and a calmness divine,
Rest for the weary brain and silence to my sorrow keen.
From poetry, we pass to sociology, a transition that might seem violent
enough in one of less versatility. The commandants, of course, must be
parts of the general machinery of espionage and report to Manila what
they observed in this evil sprite that might show dangerous
machinations against the peace and dignity of our lord the king. Some
of the reports they made are still extant. One of them sent about this
time by a commandant, the Captain Ricardo Carnicero, to
Governor-General Despujol contains this account of a conversation:
Carnicero. Tell me, Rizal, what reforms seem to you most vital for
this country?
Rizal. First of all, to secure representation for it in the Cortes
[Spanish parliament] that there may be an end to the despotisms now
committed upon it.
Next to secularize the priesthood, [184] abolishing the power the
friars now exercise over the Government and the country. To
distribute the parishes as they become vacant, among the body of
the clergy, so that the clergy may be both Spanish and Philippine.
To reform the administration in all its branches.
To promote primary instruction, to end the interference of the
friars in the control of education, to give better salaries to both
men and women teachers.
To divide civil appointments equally between the Spaniards and the
Filipinos.
To cleanse the administration of justice.
To establish in capitals of more than 16,000 inhabitants schools of
arts and crafts.
These are my chief reforms. Once established in the right spirit,
the Philippines would be the happiest country in the world.
Carnicero. Friend Rizal, these reforms of yours do not seem to me
at all bad; but you seem to forget that the friars have as much
influence in Madrid as in Manila, and for this reason it would be
practically impossible at this time to put these changes into
effect.
Rizal. Do not think so. The influence of the friars is waning in
all parts of the world. I am bold enough to assure you that
wherever a government, even a little advanced, would give a free
hand to five or six honest and patriotic men, the power of the
friars would disappear. In Madrid it is perfectly well known what
the friars are doing here. So true is this that in the first
interview I had with Pi y Linares Rivas, when he was a member of
the Liberal party of Spain, he told me of things in this country of
which, although I was born here, I had been in ignorance. I can
cite to you many other instances of men in Spain that have exact
data on the lives and characters of the friars in the Philippines.
These gentlemen said to me: “The bad governments that in Spain are
following one another are blamed for many abuses that in reality
are wrought by the religious corporations. On the day when things
change we shall not forget the real offenders.” Excuse me for
saying this to you, but the friars are not wanted in the
Philippines. Always they become more repugnant and hateful as
always they interfere the more in conditions and affairs that do
not belong to them. [185]
Where lay the sedition that Rizal plotted is evident from this report,
and equally evident what power pulled the strings behind puppet king
and manikin premier.
He must have had reason, even in far Dapitan, to wonder if there were
any place out of range of the malicious or the dull. Persons that
thought they had a call to reform him and other persons that believed
they had been appointed to torture him would not leave him alone even
here. It was a place with what was called a mail service; in the course
of time almost any letter that had passed the censor would come limping
in. Among such freight arrived one day a laborious effort from the
superior of the Jesuits in the Philippines, the Rev. Father Pastells,
in which he took occasion to offer disagreeable remarks. Rizal might
have responded in kind, if he had pleased; as to which, take note of
some of the sarcastic passages in “Noli Me Tangere.” Instead of
flouting his reverend critic, he chose to favor him with a serious
letter in which the faith that guided his course was set forth with the
eloquence of honesty. He wrote:
You exclaim: “What a pity that so gifted a youth should not have
used his talents in a better cause.” Possibly there are other
causes better than mine. But my cause is good, and that is enough
for me.
Others, perhaps, may gain more honors and greater glory. But I am
like the bamboo, which is also a native of this soil. It is used
for cottages of light material and not for heavy European
buildings. So I regret neither my humble cause nor its small
rewards. I only regret the little talent that God has given me to
use in its service. If instead of being weak bamboo I had been
solid hardwood, I should have been able to give better aid. But He
that made me what I am never makes mistakes in any of His acts. He
knows very well how useful are even the smallest cottages.
As to any fame, honor, or profit that I might have gained, I admit
all that to sound attractive, for I am a young man of flesh and
blood with a full share of human weaknesses. But no one chooses the
nationality or race into which he is born. With his birth he
profits by the privileges or suffers the disadvantages that race
and nationality bring. So I accept the cause of my country.
I have confidence that He that created me a Filipino will know how
to pardon in me mistakes due to our hard position and the poor
education we receive from our birth.
I am not working for fame or glory. I have no ambition to rival
others that are born into conditions very different from my own.
My only desire is to do all I can within the limits of my powers. I
wish most to do what is needed most. I have received a little
learning and I think I ought to teach it to my countrymen. Others
more fortunate than I may work for the great things. [186]
He had letters of a different tenor from members of his family, toward
whom he yearned all his life with an almost singular devotion; but for
his strong sense of family duty he might then be receipting for great
fees and living sweetly in Hong-Kong instead of facing the miseries of
Dapitan. Of this fact he never made a mention to any one, if he thought
of it himself. Among the letters from these relatives that he held so
dear came one from a nephew in Luzon to which he made the following
characteristic reply:
I think I ought to mention to you a slight fault that you have
committed in your letter. It is a little error that many in society
make.
One does not say, “I and my sister greet you,” but “my sister and I
greet you.” Always you have to put yourself last. You should say,
“Emilio and I,” “you and I,” and so on. For the rest, your letter
leaves nothing to be desired in clearness, conciseness, and
spelling. Then keep on advancing. Learn, learn, and think much
about what you learn. Life is a very serious matter. It only goes
well for those that have intelligence and heart. To live is to be
among men, and to be among men is to strive.
But this strife is not a brute-like, selfish struggle, nor with men
alone. It is a strife with them, and at the same time with one’s
own passions. It is a struggle with the proprieties, with errors,
with prejudices. It is a never ending striving, with a smile on the
lips and the tears in the heart.
On this battle-field man has no better weapon than his
intelligence. He possesses no more force than he has heart. Bring
it out, then. Improve it, keep it prepared, and strengthen and
educate yourself for this.
Upon such a spirit the horrors of exile must have weighed little. In a
region strange, at that time uncouth and, compared with many in “your
Oriental Eden Isles,” unattractive, he offers to the world an
unaccustomed figure of the outcast. He went without repining to regular
and useful work while he understood well enough that he was a
sacrificial offering and fated to be so; the hatred and contempt of the
reactionary Interests were concentrated upon him; he was victimized for
his countrymen. Only two privations seemed poignant to him. He longed
for his family; he missed his books. With these, it appears, he would
have been content, eying cheerfully the fate that seemed to have at
last defined his career; for he had little doubt he should end his days
on this lonely shore. For consolation in his spiritual lack, he turned
to his arts and modeled assiduously; some of the most marvelous of his
sculptures belong to this period. Among them the bust of Father
Guerrico [187] that was exhibited years afterward at the St. Louis
Exposition, and won a gold medal there. [188] He was the spontaneous
artist that without conscious effort descries beauty in commonplace
things. Opposite his dwelling a native woman, bent upon one knee, was
cleaning the street for a coming festival. Something in her pose and
garmenture struck him as a graceful characteristic; he modeled her as
she labored. [189] From memory he modeled busts and medallions of men
he had known in Europe and Asia; in his sketch-book he preserved
effects he noticed in sky, sea, and woods. He returned to poetic
composition and produced now some of the most beautiful of his works.
More than this in armor of patience the Stoics themselves could demand
nothing. How many Highland Scotch have stood upon the sands of France
and sighed away their souls northward? And how often have the
sympathetic thought with compassion of the English pioneers in early
America, of the Pilgrim fathers that first bleak winter, of Hugo in
Jersey and Napoleon chained to his rock? This man hunted out the
beauties of exile, made them his friends and companions, taught his
pupils, made poetry, carved statues, loved his fellows, and thanked
God.
CHAPTER XV
THE KATIPUNAN
To his father and mother he wrote urging them to come to Dapitan and
make their home on the land that he had bought. In this he must have
lightly estimated the rancor or the vigilance of his enemies, or have
been imperfectly informed about what was going on in Manila—or both. It
was a time when all suspected persons were to be watched with unusual
diligence, and of these the Rizal family came first. Meantime, the
exile’s fate, of which he was wont to take a somber view, shifted
somewhat its familiar aspect of misfortune and sent him one gleam of
happiness. In the midst of his lonely state and Promethean miseries
adroitly prepared for him, he met a woman that attracted him, and ended
by marrying her.
This came about after a strange fashion. All this time he had been
faithful to the memory of Leonora. [190] A few months after he had
taken up his residence in Dapitan there came thither a patient from
Hong-Kong named Taufer, an American engineer, blind, and drawn to
Dapitan by the fame of the great oculist. [191] He had with him his
adopted daughter Josefina, who promptly fell in love with Rizal. Her
real name was Josephine Bracken; her parentage was Irish. Her father
had been a non-commissioned officer in the British army and stationed
at Hong-Kong. When he died he left a large family in extreme poverty.
Taufer, who was a kindly man of some means, adopted the youngest child
as a matter of charity and then grew to love her as if she had been his
own daughter. For seventeen years she had been his daily companion; in
the long night of his blindness she was his guide and comforter.
If her portraits do her justice, Josephine must have had unusual
beauty, but her letters do not reveal in her the intellectual gifts
that would have made her an ideal companion for José Rizal. Yet she
must have been sympathetic, and he, solitary at the world’s outpost,
seems to have been fond of her. When he came to ask her hand in
marriage of her guardian, Mr. Taufer was overcome with grief. An hour
later, he attempted suicide. He was blind; the examinations of Rizal
had shown no chance that his eyesight could be restored; a daughter of
his had but lately left him to be married; he had lost his first wife;
his second marriage had not been happy; and he felt that without
Josephine there was nothing to live for. Rizal came upon him razor in
hand about to carry out his threat and narrowly rescued him from
himself. [192]
After this, a marriage seemed impossible, and Josephine returned to
Hong-Kong with Taufer.
But the affair had gone so far that already Rizal had made overtures to
the parish priest to perform the ceremony. The priest shook his head:
there were Rizal’s well known heresies in the way; he could not marry a
heretic. Rizal said that if by heresies his political opinions were
meant, nothing could induce him to profess any change in them; but if
the priest meant religious views, he was ready to declare that he was
and had been at all times a faithful son of the Catholic religion and
purposed so to remain. The priest thought a declaration to this effect
might win past the bishop, who now appeared as the chief obstacle; at
least he would send to Cebu to find out. The letter of inquiry he had
written and was about to despatch when news came that the engagement
had been broken. The letter was never sent.
None the less, Rizal and Josephine continued to regard themselves as
plighted, and after a time in Hong-Kong Mr. Taufer was won over to
consent to their union. Josephine went to Manila, where she made the
acquaintance of Rizal’s mother and sisters. She was about to start for
Dapitan to renew the attempt to gain the sanction of the church when in
a conversation Mrs. Mercado reminded her that there were two views of
this proceeding. It was doubtful if the bishop could be induced to
think well of the marriage; but even if he could his permission would
then be regarded as evidence of compromise on Rizal’s part. In the
opinion of many of his countrymen he enlisted against the church when
he enrolled against the friars; since the religious orders had come to
control the ecclesiastic as well as the political administration, the
distinction between church and friar was to some minds fairly vague.
Mrs. Mercado desired that nothing should weaken her son’s influence; a
constancy from which we may surmise of what fighting stock she came.
She knew that anything that looked like compromise would hearten his
enemies and dismay his friends. Therefore, she suggested a civil
marriage, the church to be ignored. Civil marriages and even common-law
marriages were now authorized by the laws of Spain, and, if not yet
decreed in the islands, were legally binding there. [193]
This advice the lovers deemed good when Josephine reached Dapitan and
reported it; there was no more talk of a dispensation from the bishop
of Cebu. A marriage ceremony was performed by the simple device of the
taking of hands before witnesses and the registering of their mutual
vows.
Rizal’s stout-hearted mother succeeded about this time in winning
permission to visit her son; later came two of his sisters. Their
presence revived in him the hope he had once cherished of uniting his
family in a spot where, after so much of strife and grief, they might
begin life afresh and be free from the friars that were the landlords
and rulers of Biñan and Calamba. He could see no reason why Mindanao
should not be well adapted to their needs. Government could not urge
against such a plan the objection it used against the North Borneo
project; Mindanao was Philippine territory. He wrote to Despujol asking
for the necessary permits and received a chilly answer reminding him
that he was an exile and an outcast and in no position to seek favors
of his Government. Steady persistence in the face of whatever rebuff
was one of Rizal’s strongest traits; the man seemed as incapable of
discouragement as George Washington was; and the philosophical reader
of history may well consider the appearance of this quality in three
men that founded three nations, William the Silent, Washington, and
Rizal, and inquire whether in value to the world this possession did
not overtop all others. With one cherished hope crushed, he turned to
another. He set himself to improve agriculture in the region where he
had been marooned; he showed the farmers how they could raise better
crops and get better prices for them. From the United States, where in
his travels he had observed with interest the latest agricultural
inventions, he imported modern farm machinery, using it upon his own
place and teaching its use to others. It has been the lot of few men to
lead lives of such varied use to their fellows. He seemed to go through
the world with eyes observing whatever was done around him and mind
considering how it could be done better.
Meantime, in Manila great changes had been at work, of which he knew
nothing. The discontent of the people, always growing, had begun to
find a new expression. Another leader had arisen, in all ways different
from Rizal except in this that he, too, was an inevitable product of
the attempt to force upon a people a distasteful sovereignty. It has
been much the fashion, particularly with writers of a scholastic bent
or reactionary sympathy (which is probably the same thing), to speak
ill of Andrés Bonifacio. If we desire a just estimate of the forces
that worked in diverse ways for Philippine freedom, we are not to
dismiss this man lightly [194] nor to speak of him with disrespect.
Successful revolutions demand the man that thinks and the man that
acts, Mazzinis and Garibaldis, Jeffersons and Washingtons. Rizal was
the Mazzini of the Philippine struggle; Bonifacio was its Garibaldi.
He was born in the working-class, was almost wholly self-educated, and
at the time he began to be powerful in Philippine destiny was a porter
in a maritime warehouse of Manila. In his youth he developed a passion
for reading; he read when other persons slept, ate, or idled. By
diligent study in the night-time he acquired a knowledge of history and
its philosophy that in a man of his handicaps and employment was not
less than marvelous and alone would have indicated a phenomenal
capacity. [195] He studied deeply the stories of other peoples
oppressed, the Israelites in Egypt, the Dutch under Spain, the American
colonies under England, the French under their monarchical system, and
formulated from these a church militant of democratic faith and
principles of which he was first the acolyte and then the devout
minister. In the end it mastered all his thought and waking hours and
became essentially his life. Something of the great truth he saw
clearly that the substance of all real progress in civilization has
been progress in democracy, and for the most part this has been won by
hard blows, rude encounters, and illimitable sacrifices. He caught a
glimpse of the magical stimulus that came to the world from the
successive emancipations of the American and the French peoples and
another glimpse of the probable effect of a similar emancipation on his
own. Upon the condition of those countrymen of his, dragging at a chain
that stifled in them all mental vitality with all self-respect, he
stared with growing impatience while he burned and fretted for another
Bunker Hill and another Yorktown.
He was of somewhat violent passions and such deficiencies in
self-control as were to have been expected from his experiences and
inadequate training. Nevertheless, he had great sincerity, a mind of
extraordinary fertility, and a readiness for swift decision and action.
He showed himself to be indomitable when wholly concentered upon the
one cause; and his contribution to it is not now to be disparaged
because he happened to come no nearer the academic walk than Lincoln
came.
When Rizal, lured from Hong-Kong by false promises of safety, landed in
Manila, Bonifacio was twenty-nine years old. He had long revolved in
his mind the fact so patent to all observing Filipinos that the first
step to their freedom must be unity. About the time Rizal was founding
his Liga Filipina, Bonifacio was formulating another and much more
portentous union. The two were launched about the same time; one in the
open, the other in the dark and with the utmost secrecy. Bonifacio
called his society the Kataastaasang Kagalanggalangang Katipunan ng̃ mg̃a
Anak ng̃ Bayan, which being interpreted means Supreme Most Respected
Association of the Sons of the People. For brevity’s sake the long
unwieldy name soon came to be shortened into K.K.K. or the Katipunan,
and so remains in history. Bonifacio shaped it like a masonic lodge,
with a ritual, passwords, grips, and the swearing of fealty and
silence. Its avowed object was the overthrowing by force of the Spanish
power and the establishing of the Philippine nation, free and
independent.
It appears now that the name of Rizal was used as an honorary president
of this society, [196] but wholly without his authority or even
knowledge. For this unwarranted use Bonifacio was much to blame. It is
likely that he found at first some difficulty in securing recruits and
took advantage of Rizal’s great popularity. Either so, or what seems
more probable to us, he expected to have Rizal’s support for the
Katipunan when it should have grown to formidable size. In either case,
the course was inexcusable. But we are to remember that Bonifacio,
warring against the most unprincipled and ruthless of powers, believed
he was justified in using any weapons that came to his hand.
Month after month the Katipunan spread among the disgusted and restless
Filipinos—secretly, always; and we are to surmise that the care with
which the movement was to be concealed until the instant of the blow
recommended it to people smarting under a Government so obese and still
so viciously protected. How long this Government was ignorant of what
was going on nobody knows. If the vast network of spies and agents
provocateurs, with which Spanish, like Russian, rule was maintained,
brought in no hint of the mine that was being driven beneath the feet
of the governing class, the spies must have made their first recorded
failure, and that concerning the one thing most important to their
employers. Filipinos, one may say, had not so known these ever busy
birds of ill omen.
The deportation of Rizal gave to the Katipunan a great impetus; the
masses of people bitterly resented the cowardice and perfidy that had
contrived at last to drag down the popular champion. At first they knew
no way to voice their protest. The Katipunan relieved them of their
uncertainty; it was the weapon thrust into their hands. A year went by
under this slowly darkening sky; then two years. Rizal was at Dapitan;
it seemed likely he would remain there until his last day, for nothing
would soften the hatred with which the friars and patricians regarded
him, and their word was the country’s law. Yet if he could be brought
back in the character of a revolutionary leader the whole country would
rise behind him. Ingenious minds brooded upon the ease with which he
could be rescued. Only a small force of troops guarded Dapitan; it
could be overpowered by a handful of resolute men. Rizal’s habit was to
take long canoe journeys alone around the coast, pursuing his
scientific inquiries; of his own will he would never violate his
parole, but suppose he should be seized and carried off by force? He
could then be picked up by a British mail-steamer, be landed at
Singapore, and be free. Intimations of these plans were conveyed to
him: he vetoed all of them. It was his word of honor that he had given
never to attempt to escape; not even with the least connivance at a
rescue would he taint his word; not even by allowing other men to
entertain a thought that his faith could be tainted; and not even in
dealing with a Government that had dealt perfidiously with him.
Bonifacio, looking into the faces of his people, believed more strongly
every day that the time to strike was near at hand, and every day he
longed the more for the active assistance of Rizal. [197] He knew well
enough the danger his movement stood in and how that danger increased
hour by hour as knowledge of what was afoot spread and could be
therefore the less easily controlled. At last he went to the length of
sending an emissary to see Rizal, to lay before him the plans for the
revolution and to ask his help. The messenger chosen was Pio
Valenzuela, a name afterwards famous and honored among his countrymen.
To disguise the real object of his visit he took with him a blind man
upon whom, it was pretended, Rizal was to perform an operation. Helped
by this ruse, the messenger had a fair chance to talk freely with the
exile.
What took place at their meeting was long in dispute. Enemies of
Philippine independence have asserted that in wrathfully rejecting
Bonifacio’s appeal Rizal declared himself against any effort for
national freedom. This is in accordance with a common process of
over-emphasizing (for propaganda effect) Rizal’s dislike of force and
doubt of the present readiness of his people for self-government. It is
certain that he declined Valenzuela’s proposal and with some heat;
[198] we may also believe that with all his might he strove to dissuade
his countrymen from violence. Yet there is testimony extant that when
he found all his pleadings were useless and the violence he feared was
but too likely he admitted that he could not in any event separate his
sympathies from his struggling countrymen.
The disputed versions of his reply are not worth the attention they
have had, because, as has been pointed out here and more than once,
Rizal’s convictions on these matters are clear. One obvious reflection
is enough to illustrate them. If he had lived through such strenuous
days as followed 1896 he would have been found in the front ranks of
those that fought for freedom and yet would never have ceased to mourn
that freedom could not be won in another way. As to this, “El
Filibusterismo,” if there were nothing else, would be testimony enough;
and if Philippine independence involved only sentimental and not
commercial interests there would be no attempt to distort or to obscure
it.
When Bonifacio received Valenzuela’s report of Rizal’s decision, he
swore, after his fashion, and determined to press on with his own plans
and forget the exile. Against the notion that the Philippines were
unready for revolution or unfitted for self-government he set himself
like a man in a battle that has thrown away fear with his scabbard. He
recalled that, weighing duly the relative strengths of the antagonists,
the American colonists were not worse prepared for the struggle that
set them free. Most revolutions, history had taught him, had been begun
by people that fought with broken weapons or bare hands; witness
Camille Desmoulins and the ragged crowd he led from the café in the
courtyard of the Palais Royal that fateful night in July. Hardly a
weapon among them all more deadly than a hammer, and yet to the echo of
their feet fell absolute government in every corner of Europe. All the
world now honors those empty hands; on the very spot where Desmoulins
addressed the crowd, behold now his statue! Are revolutions ever
wrought by well ordered ranks of daintily uniformed guards? Are they
ever launched when every condition is fitted, like joiner-work, to
their success? And, in fact, are they ever made to any man’s volition
or by anything but blind destiny that sits behind the whirlwind?
Bonifacio, at least, had no idea of waiting until the Philippines
should be populated with university graduates able to demonstrate in
scholarly phrases the philosophical sweetness of liberty. Desiring
freedom, he desired it then and there. Month by month, the Katipunan
spread and carried with it, as a flood carries a straw, the catastrophe
of this story.
At Dapitan life went on unchangingly. It is likely that Rizal had there
a happiness and a serenity he had not known since childhood. He says as
much in one of his letters:
My life now is quiet, peaceful, retired, and without glory; but I
think it is useful, too. I teach here the poor but intelligent boys
reading, Spanish, English, mathematics, and geometry. Moreover, I
teach them to behave like men. I taught the men here how to get a
better way of earning their living, and they think I am right. We
have begun, and already success has crowned our trials.
He tells how even in that out-of-the-way place there were lessons for
him to learn; how he was taught there to steer and reef, to manage a
canoe, to speak Visayan, and the better to know his own country. “God
can send you your fortune,” he adds, “even amidst the persecutions of
your friends!”
In this letter he dwells with a kind of delight on his exacting labors
in philology, of his studies in Tagalog and his Tagalog grammar, which
he had almost completed. It is plainly to be seen that his activities
kept him from nostalgia, as his captivity from the turmoil of his years
in the noisy and bitter world; and now he was happily married!
But man is not so easily separated from his Nemesis. Of a sudden all
this house of content fell in ruins about him.
All this time he was maintaining his correspondence with his friends,
the European scientists, and particularly with Dr. Blumentritt, [199]
the closest and most sympathetic of his intellectual allies. Early in
1896 a letter from Dr. Blumentritt told him of the sad condition of the
hospitals in Cuba. Yellow fever was raging in the Island, and there
were not nearly enough physicians to meet the emergency. No such report
could be made to Rizal without awakening in him his sympathy and
instinctive impulse to help whomsoever might be in distress. He wrote
to the governor-general offering to go to Cuba as a volunteer physician
in the government hospitals. There was a new governor-general now;
Despujol had ended his clouded career and gone home. Governor-General
Blanco accepted Rizal’s offer, and on August 1, 1896, the exile sailed
from Dapitan for Manila. With him went Mrs. Rizal and his little niece.
Even as a volunteer surgeon in the yellow fever hospitals he was
nominally to be a prisoner always; hence he must go to Cuba by way of
Spain and under the Spanish flag; otherwise Spanish sovereignty would
lapse and he might escape from its power. He planned to reach Manila in
time to take the next mail-boat, the Isla de Luzon, for Barcelona,
where he was to transship for Cuba. Mrs. Rizal was to reside in his
absence with his relatives at Biñan or in Manila. But the steamer that
took him from Dapitan made but a slow voyage. He had time to attend en
route a dinner in his honor at Dumaguete, and to perform an operation
on the eyes of a patient at Cebu. He reached Manila a few hours after
the Isla de Luzon had sailed. Nearly a month must elapse before another
steamer would start for Barcelona. Meantime he was detained on the
Spanish cruiser Castilla, a beautiful vessel that two years later lay
at the bottom of Manila Bay riddled with American shells. But his
confinement seems to have been easy. In a few days the officers were
his friends. The captain repeatedly invited members of his family to
dine with him on board. Mrs. Rizal came to see him, and so did former
pupils of his that had drifted from Dapitan up to Manila. He wrote
letters to his family, including one of great tenderness to his mother,
in which he included loving messages to all the household at Los Baños.
[200]
The captain of the Castilla was one of many Spaniards that
counterpoised the grim tale of his usual treatment under their flag.
Governor-General Ramón Blanco, still remembered in the islands for his
kindly, gentle ways, was another. He furnished Rizal with letters of
recommendation to high Spanish officers in Spain and in Cuba. One of
these to General Azcárraga, Spanish minister of war, was as follows:
[201]
Manila, August 30, 1896.
Esteemed General and Distinguished Friend:
I recommend to you with genuine interest Dr. José Rizal, who is
leaving for the Peninsula to place himself at the disposal of the
government as volunteer army surgeon to Cuba. During the four years
of his exile at Dapitan he has conducted himself in the most
exemplary manner, and he is, in my opinion, the more worthy of
praise and consideration in that he is in no way connected with the
extravagant attempts we are now deploring, neither those of
conspirators nor of the secret societies that have been formed.
I have the pleasure to reassure you of my high esteem, and remain
Your affectionate friend and comrade
Ramón Blanco.
On September 3, the next mail-steamer, the Isla de Panay, departed for
Barcelona, with Rizal as a kind of self-watched prisoner, guarded by
his parole and not otherwise; for here as before it is to be remarked
as one of the curiosities of this story that however his enemies in the
Government might hate him they seemed to have full confidence in his
word of honor.
But while he was still waiting on the Castilla in the harbor disaster
had begun to ripen for him.
The whole Katipunan conspiracy was laid bare to the Government.
According to the accepted story, on the night of August 19, the mother
superior of a convent-school at Tondo burst upon the parish priest at
his house with information that she had discovered a terrible plot to
massacre all the Spaniards in the Islands. A brother of one of her
pupils was a member of the Katipunan. Assessments upon members of the
order had now become frequent, as Bonifacio’s preparations drew to a
head. It is an ancient Filipino custom for the woman in each household
to keep the purse for the men. This young man’s treasurer was his
sister. Of late he had been coming to her so often for funds that she
insisted upon knowing what he wanted the money for. Then little by
little she wormed his secret from him and fled with it to the mother
superior, who took it to the padre.
Father Gil seems to have made one leap with the news to the Civil
Guard, who arrested the girl’s brother, forced a confession from him
(probably with tortures), and, taking the priest in tow, went to the
place that the youth had said was the printing-office of the Katipunan.
There they found, or said they found, incriminating documents that
revealed the plot. [202]
Or some plot. At the best of times, as we have seen, hysteria in the
governing class of Manila slept on a hair-trigger, and, being once
awakened, offered a credulity more than childlike to the most grotesque
creations of the most unhealthy imagination. On this occasion its
manifestations were of the worst. Such wild tales as flew about the
city in those days, and had the approval of grave men that must have
known better, were fit only for a group of children telling
ghost-stories in the dark. That in the middle of the night armed bands
of ferocious, horrible natives were to steal upon the innocent repose
of every white person and slit his throat from ear to ear as he slept,
was the least terrifying of these rumors, and the earliest fruitage of
an aroused and exotic fancy. Curiously enough, it had no merit in
originality, but was wan and hoary with age; for one hundred and fifty
years, at every revolt of the overtaxed natives, it had been brought
out and paraded. It even persisted to a later day and was used to
frighten adult Americans that might have been deemed beyond such
melodrama. Certain plans required American dislike of the Filipinos,
and thus the dislike was to be engendered. In the present instance, it
can hardly be necessary to say to any Filipino reader that wholesale
murder was no part of Bonifacio’s plans, nor any other of the ogreish
and blood-curdling designs that he was then said to have formed. That
it seems needful to do him this justice before another public is only
further evidence of the gross misrepresentation that interest and
profits have made of all this chapter of history.
In the madness of panic for an hour or a day men may and doubtless will
do strange things; the abject terror that shattered the reasoning
faculties of the governing class in Manila seemed only to increase with
time. There was first fear let loose on its wild charger and then its
immediate reaction, the thirst for revenge. A Spanish mob gathered at
the gates of Malacañan clamoring for instant and sanguinary reprisals.
Rizal in his flight across the American continent had commented sadly
on the lynching-parties that disgraced the Southern States of the
American Union. If he had been in Manila in those days he would have
seen the same spirit displayed by the mob that demanded his own death.
It was 1872 come again, but infinitely worse. [203]
At the first alarm, Bonifacio and some others had made their escape; he
was now in the country proclaiming the republic and raising troops; but
of Filipinos that still remained and could be accused of affiliation
with his hated society there was naturally no lack, and in a few hours
the jails were overflowing and the executioner overworked.
With almost the first breath of this midsummer madness, his enemies
thought of Rizal. “Noli Me Tangere”! The time had come full cycle for
revenge for that flagrant insult. Days passed, and the object of their
hatred lay there almost before their eyes, the broad yellow and red of
Spain flapping over him, wholly at the mercy of the Government he had
opposed. What hindered it that it did not seize him and thrust him into
prison with the rest of the conspirators, and so to Bagumbayan and an
end with him? After a time the impatient clerical party concluded that
the real obstacle was Ramon Blanco. With him the friars had never been
content; after the uncovering of the Katipunan they accused him of lack
of energy in killing rebels, and a feud sprang up between him and
Archbishop Nozaleda. [204] By common report he was now at the crisis of
the play giving to the world an illustration of the folly of
nationalistic generalizations. All Spaniards were supposed to hate and
fear Rizal; Blanco, a Spaniard, would not deliver Rizal to the
torturers because he knew the man was innocent, and he was resolved at
whatsoever cost to stand between innocence and the lynchers. [205]
But if this was a worthy exhibition of virtue in Spanish character it
led in the end to only another demonstration of the power of the
friars. They worked the cable to Madrid, and in two months they secured
the recall of Blanco [206] and the appointment of a man in his place
that had no scruples about judicial murder and much thumb-screwing.
Polavieja was his name. The Philippines were not likely soon to forget
it.
But at the moment the victim the Interests Triumphant sought was
slipping out of their hands. They must have reflected with
inexpressible rage that he would have been helpless if they had but
allowed him to remain in Manila instead of marooning him on the shores
of Dapitan. Yet there was a chance that he could be clutched and
brought back and torn to pieces. Some news of the sirocco of rage and
terror that had seized Manila reached the Isla de Panay. One of his
Filipino fellow-passengers, Pedro P. Roxas, rich but a sturdy advocate
of Philippine independence, foresaw what was at hand and quietly
stepped ashore at Singapore, where he was under the protection of
another flag. Fervently he had urged Rizal to go with him, pointing out
that his enemies were certain to take advantage of the existing panic
to kill him, and that as he was virtually a political fugitive he was
justified in seeking a political asylum. He pleaded in vain: Rizal made
answer that he had done no wrong; he would not flee. [207] He held upon
his way, and at Suez the great claw descended upon him. On a cabled
order from Manila he was put under arrest, and thence to Barcelona he
was a prisoner. [208]
The instructions were that he was to be returned as speedily as
possible to Manila for trial. He arrived at Barcelona in the morning. A
steamer was to sail for Manila that afternoon. Nevertheless, for the
few hours he must stay in Barcelona he was thrust into prison, the
sudden reversal of the confidence with which he had before been treated
indicating plainly enough to the initiated which party was now in
control at Manila. By a strange turn of fate, the Spanish commandant at
Barcelona was that same Despujol that had so basely decoyed him from
Hong-Kong into Spanish power and but for whom he might have been at
that moment safe beyond Spanish clutches. Despujol had the hardihood to
call upon the man whose life he had sold. Rizal received him with the
tolerant spirit that was so marked in his character, for it is not
recorded of him anywhere that he uttered so much as one reproach
against those that had wronged him; and Despujol seems to have felt
something like contrition as he viewed the wreck he had made of a life
so unusual.
That afternoon the steamer left for Manila with Rizal a prisoner on it.
It is like a story of overruling destiny. News of the arrest, by this
device, of the most illustrious savant in all the Spanish dominions,
one of the foremost scientists of the times, had been telegraphed about
the world and stirred a general resentment. All men that understood
colonial Spain looked with gloomiest forebodings upon his probable
doom, now that he was fanged by that medieval dragon. A plan was formed
to rescue him when the steamer should reach Singapore by suing out a
writ of habeas corpus and so snatching him from Spanish authority.
[209] So slender are the chances of fate that a mere decoration on a
flag brought to naught this benevolent design. The steamer was the
ordinary packet-boat, but on this occasion she was carrying a few
troops to the Philippines. Being deemed, therefore, on this voyage to
have the status of a transport, she hoisted the Spanish royal ensign,
and against that emblem the kindly plotters felt they had no right to
proceed. Government vessels are not subject to the authority of other
nations whose ports they chance to enter.
CHAPTER XVI
“I CAME FROM MARTYRDOM UNTO THIS PEACE”
It was November 3, 1896, when Rizal, heavily guarded, passed again
through the dark gateway of Fort Santiago, whence he had issued four
years before to go to Dapitan. Now his enemies had him wholly in their
power; he was dragged to earth at last. Yet for a time they were
puzzled how to proceed with him. Dull as they were and remote from the
highways of European thought, they were not unaware that the eyes of a
scornful world were upon them. Therefore they could not, as in the
cases of so many “unvalued men,” shoot him at sunrise on a dunghill.
Some pretense of legality must be followed; there must be regard to
decency.
But of anything civilized men could call evidence against him or of
reason for anything such men could call a trial there was no trace nor
suggestion. Say that the Katipunan was all that hysteria described it;
not a scrap of paper connected Rizal with it. He was not a member; he
had expressly disapproved of its aims; he had been an exile in Dapitan
while it was being formed. How then? And what then? In all such
dilemmas it had been the practice of the Government of the Philippines
to resort to those medieval precedents that best befitted the theory
upon which its authority was based. Where required testimony was not to
be stumbled upon it was usually to be produced with the thumb-screw and
the lash; to torture somebody into perjury was the sovereign specific.
Upon these promptings the authorities seized Paciano, Rizal’s brother,
and exercised upon him their most recondite arts. To his left hand was
fitted the terrible screw; at his right were pen and ink and a
statement that his brother had part in the Katipunan conspiracy. Then
the screw was applied until the victim fainted with the pain. But he
would not sign; no, not for all the ingenious torments of their
devising. There was iron in the Rizal blood; father and mother had
shown it. When the mother had started to trudge around Laguna de Bay,
when the father had refused to submit to the tyranny of the friar’s
agent, when José had dared to write “Noli Me Tangere,” they had
vindicated their tribal inheritance. Paciano was all of the same stern
race. Day and night the horror continued; he was trussed up until he
fainted again, and then was revived with stimulants for new sufferings,
and still he would not sign. Then his mind began to wander; he was
plainly unable to sign anything, and the torturers released him. [210]
Meantime José, though undeceived as to his probable fate, fought for
his life with the resolute courage of his kin. He knew there was no
evidence against him, that before no court with the least respect for
justice could he be convicted. But he determined to make that
conviction as difficult as possible and as shameful in the eyes of the
world. From his prison-house he issued this address:
My countrymen:
On my return from Spain I learned that my name had been in use,
among some who were in arms, as a war-cry. The news came as a
painful surprise, but, believing the incident to be closed, I kept
silence over what seemed to be irremediable. I now notice
indications that the disturbances are continuing, and lest any
persons, in good faith or bad, should avail themselves of the use
of my name, to stop such an abuse and to undeceive the unwary I
hasten to address you these lines and make known the truth.
From the very beginning, when I first had notice of what was being
planned, I opposed it, fought it, and demonstrated its absolute
impossibility. This is the fact, and witnesses to my words are
still living. I was convinced that the scheme was utterly absurd,
and, what was worse, would bring great suffering.
I did even more. When later, against my advice, the movement
materialized, of my own accord I offered not alone my good offices,
but my very life, and even my name, to be used in whatever way
might seem best, toward stifling the rebellion; for, convinced of
the ills which it would bring, I considered myself fortunate if, at
any sacrifice, I could prevent such useless misfortunes. This is
equally of record. My countrymen, I have given proofs that I am one
most anxious for liberties for our country, and I am still desirous
of them. But I place as a prior condition the education of the
people, that by means of instruction and industry our country may
have an individuality of its own and make itself worthy of these
liberties. I have recommended in my writings the study of the civic
virtues, without which there is no redemption. I have written also
(and I repeat my words) that reforms, to be beneficial, must come
from above, that those which come from below are irregularly gained
and uncertain.
Holding these ideas, I cannot do less than condemn, and I do
condemn this uprising—as absurd, savage, and plotted behind my
back—which dishonors us Filipinos and discredits those that could
plead our cause. I abhor its criminal methods and disclaim all part
in it, pitying from the bottom of my heart the unwary that have
been deceived into taking part in it.
Return then to your homes, and may God pardon those that have
wrought in bad faith! [211]
José Rizal.
Fort Santiago, December 15, 1896.
Still remained for his enemies the necessity of a semblance of charges
upon which might be based the semblance of a trial. As a move of
obvious desperation they now fell back upon the fantasy that La Liga
Filipina was an illegal body and upon the precarious assertion that
even if he had no connection with the Katipunan it had been formed as a
result of his teachings. Upon these grounds and only these his life was
to be sought; the first wholly untrue, the other tenuous and fraught
with grave danger to the existence of any system of justice. As for La
Liga Filipina, that was as seditious as an average board of trade, and
as secret; it had no purposes but economic improvement and Filipino
union. But the other charge was a different matter. If it could be held
that Rizal’s teachings were such that they instigated an uprising he
had always opposed, then any but a paralyzed dumb man could be held
responsible for anything that happened anywhere. Suppose, for instance,
a British newspaper to criticize severely the British prime minister,
and the next day a man attempt the assassination of that minister. Who
is to say, if this doctrine be sound, that the newspaper did not
instigate the murderous attempt? It is apparent that if such a view
were ever deemed valid an end would come to all free discussion or the
pretense of a free press; no journal would dare to have an opinion
about anything but the weather.
The inhibition would never stop with the press; the most ordinary and
the most useful activities of organized society would be put into
jeopardy. Suppose, for instance, Rizal had opposed and denounced
vivisection, and a weak-minded man anywhere, maddened by the loss of
his pet dog, should assault the physician that had cut it to pieces.
Who could say that Rizal under this doctrine was not the guilty
assailant? Even supposing the man that did the deed never to have read
Rizal nor heard of him, Rizal’s influence might have been transmitted
through many persons and still be his. It is evident that at once we
plunge into limitless possibilities for oppression and wrong. Suppose
an American reformer to denounce some official grafter and a fanatic to
shoot that grafter. The reformer might be hanged, and the assassin go
free.
Of all places in the civilized circuit the Philippine Islands were then
the most perilous in which to introduce such a theory. In the
Philippines an evil oligarchy maintained itself by terrorizing the
population. Before its need and greed, justice was at best farcical. To
admit that any man that criticized its methods might be held
responsible for the acts of any revolutionist, murderer, or lunatic
whatsoever was to place in the hands of the oligarchy the last and
worst of weapons. It would need nothing else to render unassailable and
unlimited its already despotic power. The courts would be a hangman’s
noose.
Yet on such preposterous grounds and none other the terrible travesty
of justice was now urged along. It is likely that since the days of
Caiaphas has been no such desperate hunting for testimony against
innocence. “This man spake blasphemy,” cried the high priests, and,
when they could find no confirmation of the charge, twisted to a
desired meaning the most casual utterance, the cross being made ready
in advance. The proceedings were as illegal as unjust. Supposing the
offenses charged to have been committed, they were under the civil law
of the Islands. The civil law and the civil courts were brushed aside
lest even in the Philippines they might fail of legalized murder, or
halt it; and the proceedings were held by court martial.
Before this tribunal, organized to slay, Rizal was brought bound, his
elbows drawn back with cords so as almost to touch. Thus he must sit
throughout each session, though the notion that he might try to escape
or to assault any one was obviously fantastic, for he was heavily
guarded and the room was filled with soldiery. To a gratuitous malice
all this must be ascribed, the malice of immature or perverted minds.
The torments he endured from aching muscles and constricted arteries as
thus he sat grew almost intolerable while the long sessions dragged on,
but it is not recorded that the victim made complaint. He was not
allowed an attorney, but a list of army officers was spread before him
from among whom he might select counsel—so called. He found in the list
a name that had a friendly sound in his ear. It was de Andrade, and
proved to be borne by a brother of the young army officer that had been
assigned to watch him and had ended by becoming his warm admirer and
charmed companion on so many walks in 1887. But the choice of a counsel
was mere formality. Luis de Andrade did all he could to win justice for
the prisoner, but before such a court he might as well have used
question with a wolf. [212]
There was no taking of testimony in any sense that civilized nations
have of that term. A few terrified Filipinos were put upon the stand,
and answers were extracted from their lips to carefully prepared
questions; but cross-examination was not allowed, and the value of
their admissions was nothing. The judge-advocate denounced Rizal as a
traitor and an enemy to Spain. Extracts were read from his writings
that it was pretended had encouraged the existing revolt. The Christmas
holidays intervened while the ghastly processes of slaughter were still
incomplete. On December 29 the court found him guilty and sentenced him
to be shot within twenty-four hours.
To this and nothing else he had looked forward from the beginning of
the hearing. Some nights before the verdict, knowing well what it would
be, he had written in his cell by the light of his little alcohol lamp
his farewell to his country, his family, and his friends. It is that
poem now become the national classic of the Philippines, the beautiful
and tender elegy that he called “My Last Farewell.” On the last night
he folded the manuscript and hid it in the bowl of the lamp.
Of this marvelous production, almost unequaled in literature for its
pathetic sincerity and noble feeling, there exist in English two
versions. [213] That which seems the more adequately to express the
thought of the original we offer here, and his must be a strangely
indurated heart that can read it without emotion:
Land I adore, farewell! thou land of the southern sun’s choosing.
Pearl of the Orient seas! our forfeited Garden of Eden,
Joyous, I yield up for thee my sad life, and were it far brighter,
Young, or rose-strewn, for thee and thy happiness still would I
give it.
Far afield, in the din and rush of maddening battle,
Others have laid down their lives, nor wavered, nor paused, in the
giving.
What matters way or place—the cypress, the lily, the laurel,
Gibbet or open field, the sword or inglorious torture—
When ’tis the hearth and the country that call for the life’s
immolation?
Dawn’s faint lights bar the east; she smiles through the cowl of
the darkness,
Just as I die....
Vision I followed from afar, desire that spurred on and consumed me!
Greeting! my parting soul cries, and greeting again! O my country!
Beautiful is it to fall, that the vision may rise to fulfilment
Giving my life for thy life, and breathing thine air in the
death-throe;
Sweet to eternally sleep in thy lap, O land of enchantment!
If in the deep rich grass that covers my rest in thy bosom,
Some day thou seest upspring a lowly tremulous blossom,
Lay there thy lips—’tis my soul!...
And if at eventide a soul for my tranquil sleep prayeth,
Pray thou, O my fatherland! for my peaceful reposing;
Pray for those who go down to death through unspeakable torments;
Pray for those who remain to suffer torture in prison;
Pray for the bitter grief of our mothers, our wives, our orphans;
Oh, pray, too, for thyself, on the way to thy final redemption!
When our still dwelling-place wraps night’s dusky mantle about her,
Leaving the dead alone with the dead, to watch till the morning,
Break not our rest, and seek not to lay death’s mystery open.
If now and then thou shouldst hear the string of a lute or a zithern,
Mine is the hand, dear country, and mine is the voice that is
singing.
When my tomb, that all have forgot, no cross nor stone marketh,
There let the laborer guide his plow, there cleave the earth open.
So shall my ashes at last be one with thy hills and thy valleys.
Little ’t will matter, then, my country, that thou shouldst forget me!
I shall be air in thy streets, and I shall be space in thy meadows;
I shall be vibrant speech in thine ears, shall be fragrance and color,
Light and shout, and loved song, for ever repeating my message.
Idolized fatherland, thou crown and deep of my sorrows,
Lovely Philippine Isles, once again adieu! I am leaving
All with thee—my friends, my love. Where I go are no tyrants;
There one dies not for the cause of his faith; there God is the ruler.
Farewell, father and mother and brother, dear friends of the fireside!
Thankful ye should be for me that I rest at the end of the long day.
Farewell, sweet, from the stranger’s land—my joy and my comrade!
Farewell, dear ones, farewell! To die is to rest from our labors!
Before his murderers, before the jeers and savage exultations of the
well dressed mob clamoring for his death, throughout the hearing, at
the moment of the unjust verdict, he had maintained the same attitude
of perfect serenity described as wonderful by all that observed it.
Other condemned men have simulated this self-possession; this man had
it in truth and not in seeming. Calmly he heard his condemnation,
calmly he reëntered the prison where for his last night on earth
quarters had been made for him in the chapel. A newspaper reporter came
to interview him. He was like a prosperous and well bred host
entertaining a cultured friend; [214] no eyes, however searching, could
discover a joint in that perfect armor of the soul sustained and
possessed, without a tremor and without a gloomy thought. To the
reporter and to others that had watched him this bearing seemed not
bravado but something mystical and inexplicable, but it seemed so only
because the source of it was beyond their understanding. He was calm
because he had long before in effect given his life to this cause and
the shooting of the next day would be only the last incident in a
sacrifice already made. Of this there is every indication. What men
call the joy of living had since his youth meant to him the joy of
serving Filipinas. He seems to have had since the day of his exile to
Dapitan a feeling that in other ways his service [215] was at an end,
but there remained the service of his death. All the hard tests of life
had left him unshaken and uncorrupted, a man truly without fear and
without reproach. With the same faultless and unpretentious courage he
walked forward to meet the end.
As was to have been expected in the conditions attending his fate, the
power that had dragged him down with so much of trickery and deceit
attempted to soil with other deceit the name he should leave to his
countrymen. To the newspaper reporter he said that “Noli Me Tangere”
had been much misunderstood because the authorities had selected from
it only passages that seemed to indicate sacrilegious or seditious
purpose, whereas when read in their proper places with the context they
had no such appearance. This statement was so distorted as to appear as
an expression of regret that he had written the book. When he said that
the Republicans in Spain had mistaken their strength and their
opportunities, this was distorted into a petulant charge that the
Spanish Republicans had been the cause of all his troubles. When he
spoke with characteristic modesty of his own work as feeble and of
small avail, the remark was twisted into a dubiety of his basic faith.
Attempts were made to wrest from him something that could be called a
retraction of his political opinions; even the last solemn offices of
the church were utilized toward an end so base. All his life he had
remained a true Catholic, [216] despite his sharp condemnation of the
friars. He now desired to partake of the holy sacrament, and priests
were sent to him. What took place when they gathered around him was so
perverted that no man may feel sure he has the truth of the story.
According to one account the priests refused him the sacrament until
they should satisfy themselves of his orthodoxy, and a long examination
followed. They demanded a signed statement affirming his belief in
revealed religion. He readily consented to give it; he could have given
it truthfully at any time. Of this affirmation two irreconcilable
versions were subsequently reported, a fact that dealing with a thing
so simple must serve to discredit both. As to one, no other evidence is
needed than its style and content to show that Rizal never wrote it. As
to the other reputed statement, opinions differ; reasonably, one might
say, since there is extant no original copy, and no one now pretends to
have seen such a copy. The style in the second statement is Rizal’s or
an imitation of his; the expressions in it are in line with his general
convictions; [217] and if throughout this phase of the story we met
with less of manifest treachery and lying the probable authenticity of
some such declaration might well be admitted.
On the basis of evidence so untrustworthy the tale was fabricated that
he had retracted his political views. It was brazen impudence that put
out this fable and simple credulity that believed it. Much that
happened in the last scenes of his tragedy is and always will be
uncertain, but the one thing about which is no doubt is that he went to
his death unshaken in his loyalty to the great causes to which he had
dedicated his life and labors, to the rights, emancipation, and
progress of his country.
If from the tangled accounts now available to us we wish to build a
surmise, it is likely that Rizal affirmed his religious faith,
renounced masonry, [218] was reconciled to the church, received the
sacrament, and then had [219] performed the ecclesiastical marriage
rites between him and his wife that he had so desired in vain at
Dapitan. Even as to this there is no record, but the correlative facts
are strong. To his mother and sisters he now said the last farewell;
said it with the calm and gentle resignation that from the first had
marked his conduct. Even in that crux of his sufferings his command
upon himself and all his faculties seems never to have wavered. He knew
well that all his effects would be searched and any papers he might
leave would be seized and destroyed; yet he desired to give to his
countrymen the song of parting he had written for them. At the
interview with his mother and sisters they were kept separated from him
by a space of some feet under the pretended fear that poison might be
passed to him and so might he cheat revenge of blood-drops for which it
thirsted. To transmit the poem, therefore, was difficult, but the
resourceful mind of Rizal did not fail him now. The little alcohol lamp
by which he had written his song and read and studied in his cell had
been the gift of a friend in Europe. In the Islands it was something of
a curiosity. This he managed to bequeath to his sister Trinidad and
when he told her about it he added quickly in English, “There is
something inside.” [220]
Even in these last hours efforts were made by his friends to rescue him
from the jaws that had opened to rend him. Relatives and friends
besieged the governor-general; he would not even admit them to his
presence. In Spain fervent appeals were made to the National
Government. All scientific and sympathetic Europe was horror-stricken
at the impending murder of one of the most learned men of the age.
There is a story that the Spanish prime minister wished to yield to
these demands. It was the queen regent that he found implacable.
Something in one of Rizal’s books had mortally offended her. She, too,
was determined to have his blood.
All the hours of that night Rizal spent in prayer, in reading, and in
cheerful conversation with his guards and the priests. He did not sleep
and had no need of sleep. But his wakefulness was not of his nerves.
None of the watchers could detect a troubled look in his eyes or a
quaver in the smooth, even tones of his voice. [221] Other men so
counting out the last moments of their lives have been mercifully
supplied with drugs and drink. The stimulus that sustained Rizal must
have been from within. So have testified the witnesses.
It was a beautiful morning, men still remember, calm, cool, and bright,
“the bridal of the earth and sky,” typical of the sweet December
weather in the Philippines; the air so clear the mountains on both
sides stood out marvelously brown and rugged; so clear one could even
make out far Corregidor on guard at the entrance of the bay.
As day broke the crowds began to gather in the Luneta. Spaniards of the
ruling caste predominated, come to see the death of their enemy and
gloat over him; but also there were Filipinos with drawn brows and
quivering lips, disquieting to look upon. [222] In many Filipino houses
that last night there had been no sleep. Men and women prayed all night
for the man about to be slaughtered for their sake.
At seven o’clock the troopers came and tightly bound his arms behind
his back. He wore a neat black suit with a sack-coat and a black hat.
Outside, the trumpets sounded and the drums beat. The troopers placed
him in the center of a strong guard. Then they led him forth from the
prison door.
With the drum always beating at the head of the band, thus he was
marched almost a mile through scenes that had been familiar to him in
his boyhood. Thirty-seven years and twenty-eight days before, another
martyr had gone forth to his death with the same clear-souled,
untroubled calm. “This is a beautiful country,” said John Brown,
Osawatomie Brown, as with the sheriff he drove to the execution-place;
“I never noticed it before.” With the same sense of drawing in for the
last time the breath of God’s bounty to men, Rizal looked about him and
spoke of the loveliness of the scene. “I used to walk here with my
sweetheart,” said he, thinking of Leonora. Above the roofs he saw the
Ateneo, where he had spent so many happy days. Since his time the
buildings had been altered. “When were those two towers added?” he
asked and observed the effect with a critical eye. All the way he went
with head erect, unflushed cheek, unruffled mien, as one that goes
forth to meet fair weather in the morning.
By his side marched the Jesuit priests, his comforters and supporters,
for he always remembered tenderly his days at the Ateneo.
“We are going to Calvary,” he said to them. “My sufferings are little.
The Savior suffered much. He was nailed to the cross. In an instant the
bullets will end all my pain.” [223]
A crowd lined the street, for the most part silent, but among the
Spaniards were some exclamations of joy. One foreigner, a Scotchman,
watching the scene, was moved to cry aloud a brief good-by. A little
company of Rizal’s former students at Dapitan stood together and wept.
He looked out upon the bay and the ships.
“How beautiful is the morning, Father! How clear is the view of
Corregidor and the Cavite Mountains! I walked here with my sweetheart,
Leonora, on mornings like this.”
“The morning to be is still more beautiful, my son,” answered the
priest.
“Why is that, Father?” asked Rizal, not quite understanding his
confessor’s words.
The officer in charge of the squad stepped between them, and the
father’s reply was not heard.
Thus they moved to the place of execution, the dreadful Bagumbayan
Field, the spot where so many others had been slain for defying
tyranny, where Fathers Gomez, Burgos, and Zamora had given up their
lives. To their memory he had dedicated his protest against the beast
that had torn them. Now in his own turn he was come to be torn.
A great troop of soldiers had formed a square to hold the people back.
Artillery was drawn up as if a rescue were feared, and at one
side—strange and incongruous spectacle!—a band to sound the national
anthem of triumph over this one man. To the governing class the
occasion was all holiday. Hundreds of that class stood there, men and
women, and uttered cries of animal pleasure when they saw their enemy
come bound and helpless to be killed before their eyes.
Neither they nor the engines of death they had evoked seemed to pierce
the serenity that wrapped him around. As they reached the field, he
stopped before the captain in command and said quietly:
“Will you shoot me in the front, please?”
“It cannot be,” said the captain. “I have orders to shoot you in the
back.”
“But I was never traitor to my own country nor to Spain.”
“My duty is to comply with the orders I have received.”
“Very well, then; shoot me as you please.” [224]
He asked that the soldiers be instructed to aim not at his head but his
heart, and that he should not be compelled to kneel but might receive
his death standing. These requests the captain granted.
Into the square he marched, between two batteries of artillery, a
company of cavalry in front, another behind. With him still went the
priests, Fathers Estanislao March and José Villaclara, and behind them
the man that had been his counsel in the mock trial, Luis de Andrade.
Rizal stepped to the place where he was to die and looked out over the
blue sea, bright in the sunlight. And then for the first time the iron
composure seemed shaken. It may have been some thought of his lost
youth, or the terror of the scene that reached out at him like
something coldly palpable. A shiver seemed to go over him; the mortal
man that he had so long suppressed in him reasserted itself; and one
great sigh seemed to burst from his heart.
“O Father, how terrible it is to die! How one suffers! Father, I
forgive every one from the bottom of my heart; I have no resentment
against any one: believe me, your reverence!”
The next instant the spasm had passed. The will with which he had ruled
himself so long came back to its accustomed empire. He was himself
again and stood erect, with no twitching of his lips and no fear in his
eyes.
The executioners marched upon the field.
Rizal shook hands firmly with the priests and with his counsel. Father
March held to him the cross for him to kiss.
He now turned his face to the east and stood with his back to the
firing-squad. Eight native soldiers had been told off to slay their
fellow-countryman. Behind them were eight Spanish soldiers with leveled
rifles. They were to shoot the executioners if these failed to obey
orders.
Rizal stood with his eyes open and turned toward the sky. In his face,
it is said, was neither ecstasy nor fear, but only the calm of a
perfect resignation. Often he had said: “What is death to me? I have
sown the seed; others are left to reap.” [225] The testing of that word
had come. It found him ready and undismayed.
At that instant a military doctor, amazed by such a show of fortitude,
ran out from the line of officers.
“Colleague,” he cried, “may I feel your pulse?”
Rizal said nothing but thrust his right hand as far as he could from
the bands that held it.
The pulse was hardly a beat above normal.
“You are well, colleague,” said the doctor, “very well!” and stepped
back to his place.
Rizal made no response and resumed his former attitude. He now twisted
his right hand and indicated the spot in his back at which the soldiers
should aim.
The captain gave the signal. The eight soldiers fired together.
The body of Rizal was seen to waver and fall. With a last effort of his
indomitable will, even in falling he turned so that he should lie with
face upward. [226]
In the thirty-sixth year of his age and the twenty-fourth year of his
service—poet, patriot, and martyr.
Cheers and laughter arose from the crowd as his blood was seen to be
pouring upon the field. Women waved their handkerchiefs and clapped
their hands; men shouted with delight. This was the end of him that had
unveiled to the world the realities of their social order; that had
ridiculed all their structure of rank and caste. He had died like a dog
before them.
The band played the national anthem. “Viva España!” shouted the crowd.
A photographer made pictures of the scene. It was a great day for
Spain. Her supremacy in the Philippines was approved and established
for ever. For whomsoever thereafter might venture to question its
righteousness, the same fate. Let him also die like a dog to the
applause and laughter of the existing order, rock-rooted and eternal.
“Viva España!” How poor are they that will not ponder history! From the
hanging of John Brown to the Emancipation Proclamation was three years
and twenty-nine days. From the murder of José Rizal to the surrender of
Manila was one year, eight months, and seventeen days.
The body was cast into an undesignated grave, and great care was taken
to obliterate all marks by which it might be identified; for this hated
enemy there should be nothing but loathing and contumely, alive or
dead. The perpetrators of this last outrage believed they had managed
with skill and success. Little they knew the people with whom they
dealt. Into the unmarked grave were covertly introduced objects that
would allow of a future identification, [227] and the dust that malice
and bigotry sought to dishonor was destined to a final burial with the
proud mourning of a nation and the respectful sympathy of the world.
Not even yet was satiated the hot thirst for blood that seemed to rage
in this abnormal community. The jails had been stuffed with other
members of the Liga Filipina, men that like Rizal had committed the
crime of desiring their country’s good. On January 11, 1897, two weeks
after the sacrifice of Rizal, fourteen of his companions were led forth
to Bagumbayan Field and shot, as he had been shot. Two of these were
priests of the church; among the laymen were members of ancient
Filipino families, and men of conspicuously blameless walk and notable
attainments. Father Inocencio Herrera and Father Prieto Gerónimo led
the procession of the condemned whose names were now to be added to the
long roll of those that had made that one field a shrine of liberty
hardly to be equaled in men’s acquaintance. Others whose blood was shed
with theirs that day on that sacred spot were Domingo Franco, Moisés
Salvador, Numeriano Adriano, Antonio Salazar, José Dizon, Luis Enciso
Villareal, Faustino Villareal, Ramón A. Padilla, Manuel Avella, Roman
Basa, Cristobal Medina, and Francisco Roxas. It was a flag dripping
with blood that Spain raised to the world that morning.
Of these some had endured such torturings that death must have come as
a relief. Neither age nor worth to be spared, was the ancestral precept
for all such butcheries. Moisés Salvador was more than seventy years
old. He had been tortured until he could no longer stand and must be
carried out and laid prone on the ground when his time came to be shot.
Francisco Roxas the thumb-screw, or whatever other deviltries, had made
insane. He knew nothing of what was going on about him but imagined
himself to be in church. When he knelt before the firing-squad he
spread his handkerchief upon the ground as he would upon the church
floor and began to say his ordinary prayers. [228]
“Viva España!” There never was a grimmer irony of fate. Even as the
crowds raised that cry above the blood of Rizal, in all the Far East
there was no more Spain. The band that played triumphant the national
anthem was in reality sounding a funeral dirge. The shots that struck
down Rizal to the cheers of “broadcloth ruffians” shattered the Spanish
empire. Until that December 30, 1896, there remained just basis for the
ancient boast about the flag whereon the sun never set; as Rizal
tottered and fell it passed among the curios of history. On the day the
murderous court martial pronounced Rizal’s death the Filipinos began to
slip from the city and join the forces of Bonifacio. Among them that
evening went Paciano, men said with pinched lips and clenched jaws, to
fight with conspicuous valor while the Spanish flag flew in his
country. [229] Silently they went and by thousands. The insurgent lines
swept up as close as Cavite, so strong had the uprising grown. There,
in the face of all the vigilance, all the spying, all the rules and
regulations, they stood in their trenches with arms in their hands.
Guns came from the thickets, the roofs, the carabao stalls. Soldiers
that enlisted without rifles fought with bolos until in the first
encounter they could wrest guns from the Spaniards. From the waterfront
of Manila one could see their flag flying. Inadequately armed, badly
fed, ragged and untrained, they went into battle and overwhelmed the
Spanish regulars, because they had been fired with a vision of freedom
and a holy wrath against the System that had struck down their
champion. Back went the Spanish regulars to the gates of Manila, as one
hundred years before the household troops of every king in Europe had
bent before the citizen soldiery of France, fighting for the republic.
In a short time there was left no last doubt of the seriousness of the
revolt; with reason this time the Spanish colony cowered. The
thirty-fourth since the beginning of Spanish dominion in the
Philippines, it threatened at last to sweep that vicious anomaly into
the sea. A man had arisen capable of verifying the most sanguine of
Bonifacio’s prophecies, a college-bred farmer, without military
training but with a strange gift of military prescience, able with an
equipment of native genius to outwit, outmanœuver, and outlast the best
of the Spanish commanders. Against the skill and restless energy of
Emilio Aguinaldo they seemed to make no permanent progress, and one
reading the records of those days is irresistibly reminded of Francis
Marion and the Carolinas. If the regulars drove him hence to-day, he
would attack them there to-morrow. A union of Filipino hearts such as
Rizal, living, had hardly dared to dream of had been cemented by his
death. For the first time the possibility of ridding all the Islands of
all Spanish power laid hold upon determined and reasoning men, and
there began a life and death struggle between light and darkness, the
nineteenth century and the sixteenth.
CHAPTER XVII
RESULTS AND INFLUENCES
In this long conflict character shone forth and latent ability,
refuting old slanders on the race. The Filipino disclosed himself. By
ancient repute the Malayan was cruel and treacherous; the test of
warfare showed him to be much more humane than the Spaniard and much
more sensible of honor and faith. He had been described as incapable of
combined and sustained activities; he revealed himself as organizing a
government out of chaos, coördinating the energies of peoples unused to
common effort, launching a democracy founded upon the most advanced
ideas of political philosophy, defending it with skill and tenacious
courage comparable to the best traditions of the Swiss mountaineers.
Men whose talents had never been suspected because they had never had a
chance to function arose in the Filipino ranks to astonish their
enemies and overwhelm prejudice. Great commanders appeared like Luna
and del Pilar; statesmen and thinkers like Felipe Calderon; and
profoundly philosophical and illuminating intellects like Apolinario
Mabini.
Next to Rizal himself, this was the greatest genius the Islands had
produced and one that would have deserved eminence in any country or
any time. He was come of poor people in the province of Batangas and
had won an education partly through the pathetic sacrifices of his
mother and partly through his own exertions, which in that time and
place amounted to heroism. He was first in a school at Tanauan and then
at the College of San Juan de Letran in Manila, where he earned his way
by teaching. His mother’s hope had been that he would take holy orders;
but his studies had made him skeptical instead of reverent; he revolted
at the priesthood, and chose the bar, to which he was admitted in 1894.
Like Bonifacio he was a great reader, but on different lines. The
warehouse porter, hanging by night over such books as he could lay
hands upon, was set aflame by the struggles of mankind against
oppression, particularly by that which is the epitome and symbol of
them all, the French Revolution. Mabini, cool and even-pulsed
philosopher, was concerned not so much with the physical aspects of
revolution as with its causes. If the human story told true,
revolutions were some rebound of the spirit of man against a privileged
class that held or sought to hold the rest as bondmen. As this conflict
between two main forces occupied so much of the history he was
analyzing with his keen sure mind, and as it seemed the only thing
there of enduring importance, he molded from its pages a philosophy of
human life and its import not unworthy of Jefferson and Mill. The basis
of everything good he conceived to be liberty; without liberty there
could be no light and no progress. With a coolly measuring eye, as an
architect looks at a building, he went over the system of government
erected by Spain in the Philippines and estimated its fatal defects as
a structure no longer tenable, knowing well that its fall was overdue.
Much more than Rizal he seems to have seized the fundamental facts
about man’s capacity for self-government and the only way to uncover
and develop that capacity. He, too, was of the cloister, and might have
slipped likewise into the darling errors of the schoolmen about the
magic keys to this wisdom believed to be buried in a classical
education. He made no such error. Not even Jefferson was of a clearer
faith. He accepted the whole democratic theory of government, not
sentimentally but as the ultimate fact in human existence. On
philosophical grounds, for unassailable reasons, popular rule was
right; in the end the only human wisdom was the general thought. In the
verdict of the majority he saw plainly the manifestation of the will of
God.
He was not influenced by Bonifacio, of whose existence he seems to have
been unaware until 1892. As one of the earliest members of La Líga
Filipina he may have been influenced at one time by Rizal; but there
was little chance and less need that he should be influenced by
anybody. His was a mind accustomed to independent action; it seems
always to have moved to its own conclusions in its own way.
He was an early recruit to the Katipunan, where, after a time, he
became one of Bonifacio’s chief advisers. A stroke of paralysis
crippled his body but left his mind clear and active. When the storm
burst and official lunacy raged in Manila, his physical infirmities
prevented his flight with his fellows. Trapped among other
unfortunates, a drum-head doomed him to be shot. It is likely the
Government knew little of his real connection with the Katipunan and
nothing of his capacity to cause trouble. The sentence of death upon
him was delayed. At last, homicidal mania spent itself even in Manila.
Then, because of his physical condition, he was set at liberty.
This was in 1897, when revolution had changed all the outlook in the
Philippines and the governing class was beginning to doubt its destiny.
For the next year he was undergoing medical treatment at the hot
springs of Los Baños. In the summer of 1898 he made his way to the
revolutionary forces and was thereafter their ablest counselor, the
shrewd adviser of the commanders in the field, the first voice in all
negotiations, and to the masses of people the endless source of
inspiration; for in all emergencies, however sudden or perplexing, here
was the heart indomitable.
In him as in Rizal, the mysteries of an unusual power resolve
themselves at last into unusual character. What was Mabini’s character
may be gathered from this decalogue he composed for his own guidance
and that of his countrymen:
First. Thou shalt love God and thine honor above all things; God as
the fountain of all truth, of all justice, and of all activity; and
thine honor, the only power that will oblige thee to be faithful,
just, and industrious.
Second. Thou shalt worship God in the form that thy conscience may
deem most righteous and worthy; for in thy conscience, which
condemns thine evil deeds and praises thy good ones, speaks thy
God.
Third. Thou shalt cultivate the special gifts that God has granted
thee, working and studying according to thine ability, never
leaving the path of righteousness and justice, in order to attain
to thine own perfection, by means whereof thou shalt contribute to
the progress of humanity. Thus thou shalt fulfil the mission to
which God has appointed thee, and by so doing thou shalt be
honored, and, being honored, thou shalt glorify thy God.
Fourth. Thou shalt love thy country after God and thine honor and
more than thyself: for she is the only paradise which God has given
thee in this life, the only patrimony of thy race, the only
inheritance of thine ancestors, and the only hope of thy posterity;
because of her, thou hast life, love, and interests, happiness,
honor, and God.
Fifth. Thou shalt strive for the happiness of thy country before
thine own, making of her the kingdom of reason, of justice, and of
labor; for if she be happy, thou, together with thy family, shalt
likewise be happy.
Sixth. Thou shalt strive for the independence of thy country; for
only thou canst have any real interest in her advancement and
exaltation, because her independence constitutes thine own liberty;
her advancement, thy perfection; and her exaltation, thine own
glory and immortality.
Seventh. Thou shalt not recognize in thy country the authority of
any person that has not been elected by thee and thy countrymen;
for authority emanates from God, and as God speaks in the
conscience of every man, the person designated and proclaimed by
the conscience of a whole people is the only one that can use true
authority.
Eighth. Thou shalt strive for a republic and never for a monarchy
in the country; for the latter exalts one or several families and
founds a dynasty; the former makes a people noble and worthy
through reason, great through liberty, and prosperous and brilliant
through labor.
Ninth. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself; for God has imposed
upon him the obligation to help thee, as upon thee the obligation
to help him, and not to do to thee what he would not have thee do
unto him; but if thy neighbor, failing in this sacred duty, attempt
against thy life, thy liberty, and thy interests, then thou shalt
destroy and annihilate him, for the supreme law of
self-preservation prevails.
Tenth. Thou shalt consider thy countryman as more than thy
neighbor; thou shalt see in him thy friend, thy brother, or at
least thy comrade, with whom thou art bound by one fate, by the
same joys and sorrows, and by common aspirations and interests.
Therefore, as long as national frontiers subsist, raised and
maintained by the selfishness of race and of family, with thy
countryman alone shalt thou unite in a perfect solidarity of
purpose and interest, in order to have force, not only to resist
the common enemy but also to attain all the aims of human life.
Meantime, in the great events that had shaken this ancient theater of
bold deeds, the freedom of which Mabini and his fellows had dreamed had
more than once lightened before them. With the news of the discovery of
the Katipunan and the cruelties of the hysteria in high places that
followed next, the revolution spread swiftly to the provinces. Cavite,
Batangas, Zambales, Tarlac rose as the clans rose in Scotland; a
remarkable fact, for here had been no preparation, and the Katipunan
had not gone far beyond Manila walls. Nothing would seem to show more
plainly that the psychology of the people had been all misread. At
Rizal’s school he had noticed that the Spaniards deemed the natives
submissive to kicks and insults when in reality wrath burned in the
native heart. It was so here; while the “miserable Indio” had borne in
silence the lash of the governing class he had not ceased at any time
to resent its sting, and at the first call to revolt the whole Island
went aflame. In a week the comfortable fictions about Filipino
incapacity were shattered by such ponderable facts as shot and shell,
and Spain was retreating before the gravest crisis it had known in its
325 years of mismanagement.
Bonifacio’s forces increased daily. He gave battle to the regular
troops sent against him and sometimes he beat them, sometimes he was
beaten; but never was he dismayed. He developed captains among the
young men that flocked around him; with others, this Emilio Aguinaldo
of whom we have spoken. This was a youth lately out of college that had
never set a squadron in the field nor the divisions of a battle knew
more than Cassio. Yet he quickly showed such natural talents for
command that he made his fame enduring among the military leaders of
all times. He was born in the city of Cavite in March, 1869, and had
studied at the College of San Juan with no more thought of being a
soldier than of being a chiropodist. He had read his horoscope in the
face of fate and perceived that he was to be a farmer and lead a quiet
life among dingles and rice-plots. No sooner had he fingered his degree
at San Juan than he hastened to fulfil this modest destiny by taking a
farm in Cavite province and trying to better the yield of rice there.
He had character, a presence, and a good mind; he had not been farming
long when he was made municipal captain of his district. From his youth
he seems to have been strong for nationalism, being a type of the class
of young men rising in all parts of the Islands on whom the Spanish
collar rested uneasily if at all, the class of which Rizal was the best
example and natural leader. In 1894 he joined the Katipunan. When
Father Gil pulled the strings and revealed, to the fevered imagination
of the Spaniards, the lair of this frightful monster, Aguinaldo was one
of the first to proclaim the revolution. Chiefly it was his work that
made Cavite an insurrectionary stronghold. In whatever he undertook he
showed the executive faculty, the power to get things done quickly and
efficiently, and a cool, hardy courage that no emergency could shake.
Bonifacio advanced him to the highest commands, and in each instance
the result justified the election, for the man had undoubtedly an
instinct for war.
On March 12, 1897, seven months after the Katipunan explosion, a
convention of the revolutionists met to establish a Provisional
Government. No doubt Bonifacio, still head of the Katipunan, expected
to be made president of the Provisional Republic, also; but the
convention’s choice was Aguinaldo. Intrigue may have played some part
in this dénouement; but the impulse to it was Aguinaldo’s brilliant
operations in the field—Napoleon and the Directoire again. Bonifacio
was offered the place of secretary of the interior. He angrily refused
it and took to the mountains with his brothers. In trying to arrest him
a party of soldiers wounded him to death.
For months the war was fought with varying chances. Sometimes the
Filipinos routed the Spaniards; [230] sometimes they were driven back.
Fresh troops came from Spain; gradually the revolutionists retired into
the mountains; but it was evident that no forces the Spaniards were
likely to gather would be enough to suppress this uprising. What Spain
faced was such years of wearying warfare as had drained her treasury
and brought her shame in Cuba. It was a prospect the Government viewed
with no satisfaction. Another governor-general, Primo de Rivera, came
out to take the place of Polavieja, the foolish man that had led the
mad hunt after Katipunanists. Once before de Rivera had been
governor-general; by some extravagance he was believed to understand
the Filipinos and to be their friend. He now sought to end a strife so
unpromising of any result except deficits. A meeting was arranged with
the insurgent chiefs, at which a treaty [231] was patched together
whereby the Filipinos were to have all the reforms and rights they had
demanded and had fought for, except actual independence. When we come
to look to-day at these sweeping changes we should note that prominent
among them was the triumph of the people so long delayed over the
orders. These were to be expelled or secularized. [232] Complete
religious freedom was explicitly guaranteed—and no more friars, no more
System. By this token it would seem, then, that Rizal had already
conquered. He exposed the orders; the orders killed him, but apparently
wrought thereby their own ruin.
Amnesty for all that had taken part in the revolution was promised,
with momentous changes in the methods of government. There was to be no
longer an irresponsible oligarchy ruling as it pleased; the Philippines
were to have representation in the Spanish Parliament; they were to
emerge from the darkness that fostered iniquity and dwell in the
critical spotlights of civilization. There was to be a free press, free
speech, free assembly; there were to be radical reforms in the courts
and other desirable novelties. A sum of money was to be deposited by
the Spanish Government to guarantee the fulfilment of these pledges and
to provide for the families of the revolutionists killed in the war.
Aguinaldo and his commanders were to retire from the country.
This was signed December 14, 1897. In two months it was evident that
the Spanish Government had no intention to keep any of the pledges thus
made. The orders abated nothing of their power and insolence; the
captured revolutionists were rigorously punished and often horribly
mishandled; there was no free speech, no free press; no improvements
were made in the courts; only a part of the guarantee fund was
deposited. The revolution was resumed with new fury. Again the
Filipinos drove the Spanish regulars before them until the noise of
their guns was heard in Manila itself, when the blowing up of the
American battle-ship Maine in the harbor of Havana gave to the
relations between Spain and the United States a new and startling
aspect.
Soon after the declaration of war between these nations and before the
battle of Manila Bay, Commodore Dewey invited Aguinaldo to join him. On
May 11, 1898, the Filipino leader landed at Cavite and took command of
the insurgent army. From that time the Spanish troops met with nothing
but disaster. Step by step they were driven (by native troops and these
only) out of every stronghold, not only in Luzon but in the other
Islands, until August when they were shut up in Manila and completely
surrounded with Filipino trenches, while Dewey’s ships held the sea
approaches. On August 10, Aguinaldo captured the Manila waterworks, and
had the city at his mercy. On August 13 it surrendered, not to him that
really had reduced it, but to the American naval and land forces;
although of such land forces there was but a handful.
Aguinaldo had made Mabini the president of his council and secretary of
foreign affairs. Mabini now bent himself to organize a constitutional
government, and if the achievement that followed had been staged nearer
to the center of the world’s attention it would have been hailed as a
triumph of constructive statesmanship. On September 15, the first
Philippine Congress met at Malolos, about twenty-five miles north of
Manila, and proceeded to draft for the Philippine Republic a
constitution that for wisdom and sound democratic philosophy may be
compared with any other similar chart by which any government ever was
steered. On November 29, 1898, the Congress adopted this constitution,
and on the following January 21, the Philippine Republic, complete and
functioning, was installed in place of the Provisional Government.
Mabini was chief justice of the Supreme Court.
The United States refused to recognize the new republic, but, in
accordance with the absurd treaty of Paris, insisted upon its own
sovereignty over all the Philippines. For twenty million dollars it had
bought of Spain a title that Spain did not possess. We need not dwell
long on the deplorable strife that now ensued between the American and
Filipino forces. [233] On February 4, the Americans advanced into
territory held by the Filipino army, and for the next two years war
raged. The Filipinos, although badly armed and always outnumbered,
showed a tenacity, a courage, and a military prowess that continually
astonished the Americans and won their candid and reiterated praise.
Much of the credit for the skilful handling of the Filipino forces was
due to General Antonio Luna, Aguinaldo’s chief of staff, whose natural
aptitude for arms had been developed by study in the best schools of
Europe. When he lost his life in June, 1899, the Filipino cause
suffered a heavy blow, but not so heavy as its enemies expected. For
the singular fact was to be noted that out of the body of natives once
despised and scornfully classed as “brethren of the water-buffalo”
arose men capable of inspiring the soldiers of a hopeless cause and of
leading them well in desperately fought battles. If for the moment we
can lay aside nationalistic consciousness, the dauntless strivings of
the Filipinos against the Americans will appear worthy of a place in
best records of the struggles of the weak against the strong.
On March 23, 1901, President Aguinaldo was captured, and thereafter the
war slowly subsided until on July 4, 1902, President Roosevelt issued a
proclamation of amnesty and the American Government took up the work of
reconstruction, of which the first purpose was to prepare the natives
for the independence repeatedly promised them.
Reviewing this chapter (none too edifying) in American history, one
cannot well escape the feeling that the American success was stained
with a needlessly harsh treatment of Mabini, the Thomas Jefferson of
the Filipino cause. The American forces captured him in September,
1899, and kept him in prison for a year. He had been at liberty a scant
six months when he was arrested again and carried a prisoner to Guam,
[234] where he was kept two years, returning home to die. While he was
under examination by American army officers, occurred a characteristic
passage. He was asked if he had heard any one talking in favor of
Philippine independence.
“I have,” said Mabini, speaking always in the same low, even voice.
“Whom have you heard?”
“Myself.”
“What? Are you opposed to the rule of the United States in the
Philippines?”
“I certainly am. I am opposed to the rule of any power here except that
of the people of these Islands. If you wish to shoot somebody for
holding such sentiments, shoot me. Do not shoot or imprison those to
whom I have urged this doctrine; do not waste time in hunting for them.
Shoot me, the author of it. I am ready whenever you are.”
He died in Manila, May 13, 1903. Next to that of Rizal, his memory is
dearest to the Filipino people.
The historian and the philosopher considering these typical passages in
the long struggle upward will see that, while ostensibly the Philippine
Republic had been defeated, in reality it had triumphed. Instead of
being crushed and obliterated, it had never ceased to exist. To this
day it is not a memory but a living organism of veritable and powerful
influence. Its flag flies side by side with that of the United States
on every public building; it functions in effect in every session of
the Philippine legislature. So far as one can see now it was a
deathless creation that Rizal unconsciously called into being, and
there could be no more impressive lesson in the inevitable destiny of
democracy than the reflection that the cruelties intended to destroy
freedom in the Philippines really gave to it enduring life. When so
easily the governing class shattered Rizal’s body and silenced his
physical voice, it did but give wings to his teachings, vindicating
them at once and multiplying them. If the result is not yet complete
and the Philippines lack still their national entity, no one that knows
their people and no one that has studied attentively the significance
the life and death of Rizal have for them will believe that this
anomaly can continue. They live now under the solemn undertaking of the
United States to set them free; that pledge they have accepted at its
face-value; from day to day they continue in expectation of its
fulfilment.
In such strange and fateful ways of which he never dreamed, Rizal has
come to be the liberator of his country and the inspiration of its
national life. It is a story so different from any other in the records
of the human advance that it may be deemed worth the world’s attention
on its own account. With arms and conflict Washington and the other
patriots of his time freed America, Bolivar and San Martin freed South
America, Garibaldi and Mazzini freed Italy. With an idea and an ideal
Rizal freed the Philippines.
The more his brief career is studied the more it appears as apart from
the ordinary aims and walks of men—singular, selfless, and admirable.
If while he lived he had little recognition worthy of his great
attainments, the veneration of his countrymen since his death has
atoned for all former indifference anywhere. For the term of Spain’s
dominion and a short time thereafter his dust remained obscurely
buried. [235] When peace had come between the Americans and Filipinos
both began to pay tribute to his memory. The body was disinterred from
its nameless grave and reburied with high honors, civic and military.
When the Filipinos came to have a measure of control over their own
affairs they made a new province of the region around Manila, including
Calamba, and named it Rizal. The anniversary of his death they made the
national holy day. On the spot where he was killed they erected a
magnificent monument, a stately and worthy memorial. Elsewhere they
multiplied the tributes to his fame until by 1921 scarcely a
considerable town in the Philippines was without his statue or bust or
some commemoration of his story. Of the ground he had tilled in
Dapitan, surrounding the little house where he had taught his school, a
national park was made. In his honor the waterworks he had engineered
were extended and perpetuated. From every available source the
Government collected, often at great cost, the relics of his physical
existence. [236]
Each return of Rizal day is marked with elaborate ceremonies; addresses
are delivered to his memory; the schools hold special exercises; the
press reviews his life and dwells upon its import. Year by year the
earnestness of these tributes increases. Other men, as their tangible
presence recedes, become more or less the lay figures of history. This
man seems to become with time only the more potent and real.
Happy should be the land that has such a national hero, in whom the
pitiless searchings of later years have not discovered enough of flaw
to discredit any part of the homage paid him but instead cause him to
appear always the more imposing figure, morally as well as
intellectually. It is but truth to say that his analogue is hard to
find in any nation of any color at any period of history. He had, what
is so seldom to be found in the men we call great, a union of brilliant
gifts and of lofty character. Of him it is never necessary to offer the
Baconian apology; he was of the brightest and wisest of mankind but
without an alloying trace of the mean.
Intellectually, there is no doubt he deserved the praise paid
wonderingly to him by Sir Hugh Clifford and others; he was a master
figure. To the capacity of his mind there seemed no normal limit; he
could comprehend any subject, learn any craft, acquire any language,
absorb any science. It seemed to be a mind of the order of Octopi, with
tentacles that reached out and pumped up not the superficies but the
heart of the matter. Hence he could out-argue the learned theologians
with the most abstruse lore of their cult, discuss with the artists the
recondite principles of their art, classify for entomologists and
zoölogists unheard-of specimens of life, thread with economists the
endless mazes of theoretical taxation, write exquisite lyrics and sing
them to music of his own composing. Such are the facts of his life,
however reluctant prejudice may be to acknowledge them. If there has
yet appeared upon this earth what may be justly called a universal
genius, it seems from the records that he was not of the white race,
the world’s confident overlords, but of the misunderstood Malay.
So slowly we yield to truth when it runs counter to theories that it
may be advisable to dwell for another moment on this man’s indisputable
achievements. Let us say, then, that to have attained to his mastery of
any two of the branches of knowledge he followed would have deserved
distinction; yet he attained to this mastery in six or seven. He was
one of the greatest ophthalmologists of his time; he was a great
ethnologist, anthropologist, biologist, zoölogist, linguist; he was
sculptor, painter, illustrator, poet, novelist, publicist, engineer,
educator, reformer. With almost any of these gifts or accomplishments
or whatever they may be termed, he could have won to eminence or to
wealth anywhere among civilized men. He is almost the only example we
have of a man marvelously endowed for material success and putting it
all aside and every thought of it; putting aside, too, even the natural
yearning for renown, that he might give himself entirely to the one end
of benefiting his people.
Of the veritable basis for these conclusions, so strange in an age and
a world that makes of disillusion a fetish, no fair-minded inquirer can
have a doubt. It is but the truth that Rizal’s private life has endured
the touch as surely as his public career. [237] That government of
himself he began to learn at the Ateneo, that scorn of the revolt of
flesh and fierce determination to put it under the dominion of spirit,
he diligently fostered all his life. He had controversies and disputes;
he even had quarrels (as we have seen) that might have had deadly
outcome; it appears that he did not in any of these lose the perfect
control of his temper. The contagion of the world’s slow stain never
came near him. He looked upon life and all its phases with a coolly
reasoned disdain of all things false. A hundred times he might have
saved himself with one only step that the world would have applauded;
he would not take that step because it would mean a compromise with the
stern, iron-bound Puritan-like standard of virtue he had chosen for
himself. No instance has been discovered in him of lies or
equivocation. As he himself declared, he had his full share of human
frailties and failings, but he managed to avoid those that scar the
soul. Some of his jests, it is true, verged upon practical joking, the
usual contradiction in men of a melancholy inclining. The wisdom of his
marriage, for reasons that need not be gone into here, is now rather
more than questionable. On the subject of the capacity of the Filipinos
for immediate self-government in his own time, it seems to us clear he
was gravely in error. Of the necessity of higher education as a
foundation for independence he made far too much. When he held that
reforms must needs come from above and could not be expected to be
moved from below he must have overlooked some sure lessons of history.
That naïve notion of his earlier years, that Spain would for the asking
supplant exploitation with altruism was, even in his youth, hardly what
men would expect from a mind so original and powerful, so sure and
clear. And yet in all his relations to and great services for his
country, in his incalculable contributions to the cause of eventual
liberty, in his complex relations to science, art, literature, serious
and valuable undertakings for the elevation of his fellows, in great
trials alike and among the midges of everyday existence, the world may
see in him the figure of a man: upright, alert, capable, resolute,
patient, resourceful, and without guile.
As to few men it has been given to bring to the struggles of life so
great a natural armament, few also have been able to wield in so short
a time a power so momentous. To all the Far East he is slowly becoming
a figure of inspiration and hope. To the modern Filipino world he gave
an impetus and an impress it can hardly lose in generations if ever. To
the movement for Philippine independence he gave vitality, character,
and energy that have grown stronger year after year. Even when we
consider the natural passion of the race for freedom and the long
succession of revolts with which it shook Spanish rule, this remains
substantially true. With his teachings first, then his sarcasms and
censures, then his appeals, he showed the way to unity and drove the
people along it. At his death he bequeathed to them his unquenchable
yearning for liberty, while he gave them the necessary background of
sacrifice for it. Whatever has been gained for nationality has been
gained under this inspiration; without or beyond his knowledge, Rizal
was the father of Philippine independence and the lofty model toward
which Philippine life may aspire.
Those that seek to disparage the race (so called) to which he belonged
find some refuge in the assertion that he was a strange and
inexplicable exception to the general incompetence, a star against a
background of ineptitude. Against this all just men will protest.
Elsewhere the great minds of every nation have exalted that nation in
the world’s esteem. The single lives that make up so much of the
historic glory surrounding Greece, Rome, Italy, Holland, and our own
Revolutionary period we do not sharply contrast against a darkness of
general inferiority around these men, but think of them as lighting up
all the land that bore them. Even if it were true that Rizal was the
only great man of the Filipino people, Filipinos might well claim the
same basis of judgment. But the more the leaders of the Philippine
revolution are studied—Mabini, Luna, the two del Pilars, Calderon—the
more men will be convinced that Rizal was the highest expression of an
intellectual force, stimulated by the growing passion for liberty but
still a power inherent in the race.
A race that gave such men to the world, that has at the same time
proved so incontestably its capacity equally for self-expansion and for
self-mastery, may well expect to be heard when asserting the foundation
principles of faith and common honesty, it faces the United States and
in the circle of nations demands the place it has earned.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX A
Translations of Poems by Rizal
TO THE PHILIPPINE YOUTH
Hold high the brow serene,
O youth, where now you stand;
Let the bright sheen
Of your grace be seen,
Fair hope of my fatherland!
Come now, thou genius grand,
And bring down inspiration;
With thy mighty hand,
Swifter than the wind’s violation,
Raise the eager mind to higher station.
Come down with pleasing light
Of art and science to the fight,
O youth, and there untie
The chains that heavy lie,
Your spirit free to blight.
See how in flaming zone
Amid the shadows thrown,
The Spaniard’s holy hand
A crown’s resplendent band
Proffers to this Indian land.
Thou, who now wouldst rise
On wings of rich emprise,
Seeking from Olympian skies
Songs of sweetest strain,
Softer than ambrosial rain;
Thou, whose voice divine
Rivals Philomel’s refrain,
And with varied line
Through the night benign
Frees mortality from pain;
Thou, who by sharp strife
Wakest thy mind to life;
And the memory bright
Of thy genius’ light
Makest immortal in its strength;
And thou, in accents clear
Of Phœbus, to Apelles dear;
Or by the brush’s magic art
Takest from nature’s store a part,
To fix it on the simple canvas’ length;
Go forth, and then the sacred fire
Of thy genius to the laurel may aspire;
To spread around the fame,
And in victory acclaim,
Through wider spheres the human name.
Day, O happy day,
Fair Filipinas, for thy land!
So bless the Power to-day
That places in thy way
This favor and this fortune grand!
—Translated by Charles Derbyshire.
TO MY MUSE
Invoked no longer is the Muse,
The lyre is out of date;
The poets it no longer use,
And youth its inspiration now imbues
With other form and state.
If to-day our fancies aught
Of verse would still require,
Helicon’s hill remains unsought;
And without heed we but inquire,
Why the coffee is not brought.
In the place of thought sincere
That our hearts may feel,
We must seize a pen of steel,
And with verse and line severe
Fling abroad a jest and jeer.
Muse, that in the past inspired me,
And with songs of love hast fired me;
Go thou now to dull repose,
For to-day in sordid prose
I must earn the gold that hired me.
Now must I ponder deep,
Meditate, and struggle on;
E’en sometimes I must weep;
For he who love would keep
Great pain has undergone.
Fled are the days of ease,
The days of love’s delight;
When flowers still would please
And give to suffering souls surcease
From pain and sorrow’s blight.
One by one they have passed on,
All I loved and moved among;
Dead or married—from me gone,
For all I place my heart upon
By fate adverse are stung.
Go thou, too, O Muse, depart,
Other regions fairer find;
For my land but offers art
For the laurel, chains that bind,
For a temple, prisons blind.
But before thou leavest me, speak:
Tell me with thy voice sublime,
Thou couldst ever from me seek
A song of sorrow for the weak,
Defiance to the tyrant’s crime.
—Translated by Charles Derbyshire.
THE SONG OF THE TRAVELER
Like to a leaf that is fallen and withered,
Tossed by the tempest from pole unto pole;
Thus roams the pilgrim abroad without purpose,
Roams without love, without country or soul.
Following anxiously treacherous fortune,
Fortune which e’en as he grasps at it flees;
Vain though the hopes that his yearning is seeking,
Yet does the pilgrim embark on the seas!
Ever impelled by the invisible power,
Destined to roam from the East to the West;
Oft he remembers the faces of loved ones,
Dreams of the day when he, too, was at rest.
Chance may assign him a tomb on the desert,
Grant him a final asylum of peace;
Soon by the world and his country forgotten,
God rest his soul when his wanderings cease!
Often the sorrowing pilgrim is envied,
Circling the globe like a sea-gull above;
Little, ah, little they know what a void
Saddens his soul by the absence of love.
Home may the pilgrim return in the future,
Back to his loved ones his footsteps he bends;
Naught will he find but the snow and the ruins,
Ashes of love and the tomb of his friends,
Pilgrim, begone! Nor return more hereafter,
Stranger thou art in the land of thy birth;
Others may sing of their love while rejoicing,
Thou once again must roam o’er the earth.
Pilgrim, begone! Nor return more hereafter,
Dry are the tears that a while for thee ran;
Pilgrim, begone! And forget thine affliction,
Loud laughs the world at the sorrows of man.
—Translated by Arthur P. Ferguson.
SONNET: TO THE VIRGIN MARY
(Written in Manila, about the year 1880)
Dear Mary, soul of peace, our consolation,
That to the heavy-stricken heart doth bring
The cool sweet waters from the all-healing spring,
From that skied throne where since thy coronation
Our hearts are bowed in tender adoration,
Lean down to hear my grief’s vague whispering,
And o’er me, bruised and broken, deign to fling
The shining robe of thy serene salvation.
Thou art my mother, placid Mary; thou
Mine only hope, my one sure source of strength.
Wild is the sea and inky dark the night.
One beacon shines!—the star upon thy brow.
Sharp sin assails me; but thy look at length
Puts sin and grief and thoughts of death to flight!
—Translated by C. E. R.
MY RETREAT
By the spreading beach where the sands are soft and fine,
At the foot of the mount in its mantle of green,
I have built my hut in the pleasant grove’s confine;
From the forest seeking peace and a calmness divine,
Rest for the weary brain and silence to my sorrow keen.
Its roof the frail palm-leaf and its floor the cane,
Its beams and posts of the unhewn wood;
Little there is of value in this hut so plain,
And better by far in the lap of the mount to have lain,
By the song and the murmur of the high sea’s flood.
A purling brook from the woodland glade
Drops down o’er the stones and around it sweeps,
Whence a fresh stream is drawn by the rough cane’s aid;
That in the still night its murmur has made,
And in the day’s heat a crystal fountain leaps.
When the sky is serene how gently it flows,
And its zither unseen ceaselessly plays;
But when the rains fall a torrent it goes
Boiling and foaming through the rocky close.
Roaring unchecked to the sea’s wide ways.
The howl of the dog and the song of the bird,
And only the kalaw’s hoarse call resound;
Nor is the voice of vain man to be heard,
My mind to harness or my steps to begird;
The woodlands alone and the sea wrap me round.
The sea, ah, the sea! for me it is all,
As it massively sweeps from the worlds apart;
Its smile in the morn to my soul is a call,
And when in the even my faith seems to pall,
It breathes with its sadness an echo to my heart.
By night an arcanum; when translucent it glows,
All spangled over with its millions of lights,
And the bright sky above resplendent shows;
While the waves with their sighs tell of their woes—
Tales that are lost as they roll to the heights.
They tell of the world when the first dawn broke,
And the sunlight over their surface played;
When thousands of beings from nothingness woke,
To people the depths and the heights to cloak,
Wherever its life-giving kiss was laid.
But when in the night the wild waves awake,
And the waves in their fury begin to leap,
Through the air rush the cries that my mind shake;
Voices that pray, songs and moans that partake
Of laments from the souls sunk down in the deep.
Then from their heights the mountains groan,
And the trees shiver tremulous from great unto least;
The groves rustle plaintive and the herds utter moan,
For they say that the ghosts of the folk that are gone
Are calling them down to their death’s merry feast.
In terror and confusion whispers the night,
While blue and green flames flit over the deep;
But calm reigns again with the morning’s light,
And soon the bold fisherman comes into sight,
As his bark rushes on and the waves sink to sleep.
So onward glide the days in my lonely abode;
Driven forth from the world where once I was known,
I muse o’er the fate upon me bestowed;
A fragment forgotten that the moss will corrode,
To hide from mankind the world in me shown.
I live in the thought of the lov’d ones left,
And oft their names to my mind are borne;
Some have forsaken me and some by death are reft;
But now ’tis all one, as through the past I drift,
That past that from me can never be torn.
For it is the friend that is with me always,
That ever in sorrow keeps the faith in my soul;
While through the still night it watches and prays,
As here in my exile in my lone hut it stays,
To strengthen my faith when doubts o’er me roll.
That faith I keep and I hope to see shine
The day when the Idea prevails over might;
When after the fray and death’s slow decline,
Some other voice sounds, far happier than mine,
To raise the glad song of the triumph of right.
I see the sky glow, refulgent and clear,
As when it forced on me my first dear illusion;
I feel the same wind kiss my forehead sere,
And the fire is the same that is burning here
To stir up youth’s blood in boiling confusion.
I breathe here the winds that perchance have pass’d
O’er the fields and the rivers of my own natal shore;
And mayhap they will bring on the returning blast
The sighs that lov’d being upon them has cast—
Messages sweet from the first love I bore.
To see the same moon, all silver’d as of yore,
I feel the sad thoughts within me arise;
The fond recollections of the troth we swore,
Of the field and the bower and the wide sea-shore,
The blushes of joy, with the silence and sighs.
A butterfly seeking the flowers and the light,
Of other lands dreaming, of vaster extent;
Scarce a youth, from home and love I took flight,
To wander unheeding, free from doubt or affright—
So in foreign lands were my brightest days spent.
I, when like a languishing bird I was fain
To the home of my fathers and my love to return,
Of a sudden the fierce tempest roar’d amain;
So I saw my wings shatter’d and no home remain,
My trust sold to others and wrecks round me burn.
Hurl’d out into exile from the land I adore,
My future all dark and no refuge to seek;
My roseate dreams hover round me once more,
Sole treasures of all that life to me bore;
The faiths of youth that with sincerity speak.
But not as of old, full of life and of grace,
Do you hold out hopes of undying reward;
Sadder I find you; on your lov’d face,
Though still sincere, the pale lines trace
The marks of the faith it is yours to guard.
You offer now, dreams, my gloom to appease,
And the years of my youth again to disclose;
So I thank you, O storm, and heaven-born breeze,
That you knew of the hour my wild flight to ease,
To cast me back down to the soil whence I rose.
By the spreading beach where the sands are soft and fine,
At the foot of the mount in the pleasant grove’s confine,
I have found a home in its mantle of green,
In the shady woods, that peace and calmness divine,
Rest for the weary brain and silence to my sorrow keen.
—Translated by Charles Derbyshire.
TO THE FLOWERS OF HEIDELBERG
Go to my native land, go, foreign flowers.
Sown by the traveler on his way;
And there, beneath its azure sky,
Where all of my affections lie;
There from the weary pilgrim say,
What faith is his in that land of ours!
Go there and tell how when the dawn,
Her early light diffusing,
Your petals first flung open wide;
His steps beside chill Neckar drawn,
You see him silent by your side,
Upon its Spring perennial musing.
Saw how when morning’s light,
All your fragrance stealing,
Whispers to you as in mirth
Playful songs of love’s delight,
He, too, murmurs his love’s feeling
In the tongue he learned at birth.
That when the sun on Koenigstuhl’s height
Pours out its golden flood,
And with its slowly warming light
Gives life to vale and grove and wood,
He greets that sun, here only upraising,
Which in his native land is at its zenith blazing.
And tell there of that day he stood,
Near to a ruin’d castle gray,
By Neckar’s banks, or shady wood,
And pluck’d you from beside the way;
Tell, too, the tale to you addressed,
And how with tender care,
Your bending leaves he press’d
’Twixt pages of some volume rare.
Bear then, O flowers, love’s message bear;
My love to all the lov’d ones there,
Peace to my country—fruitful land—
Faith whereon its sons may stand,
And virtue for its daughters’ care;
All those belovéd creatures greet,
That still around home’s altar meet.
And when you come unto its shore,
This kiss I now on you bestow,
Fling where the winged breezes blow;
That borne on them it may hover o’er
All that I love, esteem, and adore.
But though, O flowers, you come unto that land,
And still perchance your colors hold;
So far from this heroic strand,
Whose soil first bade your life unfold,
Still here your fragrance will expand;
Your soul that never quits the earth
Whose light smiled on you at your birth.
—Translated by Charles Derbyshire.
YOU ASK ME FOR VERSES
You bid me now to strike the lyre,
That mute and torn so long has lain:
And yet I cannot wake the strain,
Nor will the Muse one note inspire!
Coldly it shakes in accents dire,
As if my soul itself to wring,
And when its sound seems but to fling
A jest at its own low lament;
So in sad isolation pent,
My soul can neither feel nor sing.
There was a time—ah, ’tis too true—
But that time long ago has past—
When upon me the Muse had cast
Indulgent smile and friendship’s due;
But of that age now all too few
The thoughts that with me yet will stay;
As from the hours of festive play
There linger on mysterious notes,
And in our minds the memory floats
Of minstrelsy and music gay.
A plant I am, that scarcely grown,
Was torn from out its Eastern bed,
Where all around perfume is shed,
And life but as a dream is known;
The land that I can call my own,
By me forgotten ne’er to be,
Where trilling birds their song taught me,
And cascades with their ceaseless roar,
And all along the spreading shore
The murmurs of the sounding sea.
While yet in childhood’s happy day,
I learned upon its sun to smile,
And in my breast there seems the while
Seething volcanic fires to play.
A bard I was, my wish alway
To call upon the fleeting wind,
With all the force of verse and mind:
“Go forth, and spread around its flame,
From zone to zone with glad acclaim,
And earth to heaven together bind!”
But it I left, and now no more—
Like a tree that is broken and sere—
My natal gods bring the echo clear
Of songs that in past times they bore;
Wide seas I cross’d to foreign shore,
With hope of change and other fate;
My folly was made clear too late,
For in the place of good I sought
The seas reveal’d unto me naught,
But made death’s specter on me wait.
All these fond fancies that were mine,
All love, all feeling, all emprise,
Were left beneath the sunny skies,
Which o’er that flowery region shine;
So press no more that plea of thine,
For songs of love from out a heart
That coldly lies a thing apart;
Since now with tortur’d soul I haste
Unresting o’er the desert waste,
And lifeless gone is all the art.
—Translated by Charles Derbyshire.
MY LAST FAREWELL
Farewell, dear Fatherland, clime of the sun caress’d,
Pearl of the Orient seas, our Eden lost!
Gladly now I go to give thee this faded life’s best,
And were it brighter, fresher, or more blest,
Still would I give it thee, nor count the cost.
On the field of battle, ’mid the frenzy of fight,
Others have given their lives, without doubt or heed;
The place matters not—cypress or laurel or lily white,
Scaffold or open plain, combat or martyrdom’s plight,
’Tis ever the same, to serve our home and country’s need.
I die just when I see the dawn break,
Through the gloom of night, to herald the day;
And if color is lacking my blood thou shalt take,
Pour’d out at need for thy dear sake,
To dye with its crimson the waking ray.
My dreams, when life first opened to me,
My dreams, when the hopes of youth beat high,
Were to see thy lov’d face, O gem of the Orient sea,
From gloom and grief, from care and sorrow free;
No blush on thy brow, no tear in thine eye.
Dream of my life, my living and burning desire,
All hail! cries the soul that is now to take flight;
All hail! And sweet it is for thee to expire;
To die for thy sake, that thou mayst aspire;
And sleep in thy bosom eternity’s long night.
If over my grave some day thou seest grow,
In the grassy sod, a humble flower,
Draw it to thy lips and kiss my soul so,
While I may feel on my brow in the cold tomb below
The touch of thy tenderness, thy breath’s warm power.
Let the moon beam over me soft and serene,
Let the dawn shed over me its radiant flashes,
Let the wind with sad lament over me keen;
And if on my cross a bird should be seen,
Let it trill there its hymn of peace to my ashes.
Let the sun draw the vapors up to the sky,
And heavenward in purity bear my tardy protest;
Let some kind soul o’er my untimely fate sigh,
And in the still evening a prayer be lifted on high
From thee, O my country, that in God I may rest.
Pray for all those that hapless have died,
For all who have suffered the unmeasur’d pain;
For our mothers that bitterly their woes have cried,
For widows and orphans, for captives by torture tried;
And then for thyself that redemption thou mayst gain.
And when the dark night wraps the graveyard around,
With only the dead in their vigil to see;
Break not my repose or the mystery profound,
And perchance thou mayst hear a sad hymn resound;
’Tis I, O my country, raising a song unto thee.
When even my grave is remembered no more,
Unmark’d by never a cross nor a stone;
Let the plow sweep through it, the spade turn it o’er,
That my ashes may carpet thy earthly floor,
Before into nothingness at last they are blown.
Then will oblivion bring to me no care,
As over thy vales and plains I sweep;
Throbbing and cleansed in thy space and air,
With color and light, with song and lament I fare,
Ever repeating the faith that I keep.
My Fatherland ador’d, that sadness to my sorrow lends,
Beloved Filipinas, hear now my last good-by!
I give thee all: parents and kindred and friends;
For I go where no slave before the oppressor bends,
Where faith can never kill, and God reigns e’er on high!
Farewell to you all, from my soul torn away,
Friends of my childhood in the home dispossessed!
Give thanks that I rest from the wearisome day!
Farewell to thee, too, sweet friend that lightened my way;
Beloved creatures all, farewell! In death there is rest!
—Translated by Charles Derbyshire.
TO EDUCATION
That goddess of garnered ages that sows
For flowers of virtue perennial seeds,
As upward dispensing her light she goes,
Handfast the fatherland, too, she leads.
The breath of her quickening summons she blows
Like winds that bear life to the blossomless meads,
And Wisdom along her pathway upsprings
And Hope is revived in new bourgeonings.
Ay, she has put by for this fatherland
The mortal allures of sleep and of rest,
To weave green laurels with her white hand
On the forehead of Science or Art to be prest!
If on some aureate morrow we stand
Forth gazing as one from a mountain’s crest,
Her spirit that led us from steep to steep
There will our faltering footsteps keep.
Wherever her gleaming white throne may arise,
There with bared brow goes resolute youth;
Error gives back from the glance of her eyes,
Larger and luminous made with Truth;
Vice before her cowering lies,
Pallid and hurtless, with Crime the uncouth.
For she has a magic all potent to make
Wild nations tamest for her sweet sake.
Beneath that throne the fountain is flowing
That waters the plants, the forests, the plains;
Her placid abundance for ever outgoing
For ever increases the store that remains;
In the groves that along her rivers are growing
The spell of her quiet loveliness reigns;
If thence to rude conflict the summons sound
In her is man’s ultimate triumph found.
In her lips is all lore to hearten and guide
The pilgrim that heavenward plods his way,
In her spirit a voice sagacious to chide
Him that has purpose but for a day;
As a shore lashed vainly of impotent tides
Is her faith that knows not of fear or dismay,
As she rises with hand outstretched toward the portals
Where beckon the vistas celestial to mortals.
Where misery sits in its darkness and need,
Behold her lighting the living flame;
She fetters the filching fingers of Greed,
Gives joy for sorrow and honor for shame.
Who takes to his heart her uttermost creed
Makes nobler his life and loftier his aim,
And hers is the cool and dextrous art
That heals the old hurts in the generous heart.
The lighthouse stands on the eternal rock
By the storm-harried seas oft beaten and battered;
The hurricane bellows, the mad waves shock—
On its stirless walls they rise and are shattered,
Till Ocean drives back his disorderly flock
By their futile assailings affrighted and scattered.
So with this goddess it is, whose light
Ill cannot dim through the stormiest night.
Sapphires might serve of her splendors to tell,
Or diamonds weigh out the worth of her glory,
And still fall short of the virtues that swell
In the breasts of her sons that have mastered her story.
From flowers of her planting, their sight or their smell,
Vanishes Self, foul, haggard, and hoary,
But boundless her blessings on them whose thought
Traces the plan that the Nazarene wrought.
Around the ocean’s chrysoprase brim
The Dawn, approaching, broadcast will send
Purple and scarlet, now bright and once dim,
And yet their gorgeous painting suspend
When the sun draws nigh, and in honor of him
Show nothing but golden. So shall ascend
The goddess of knowledge and pour from above
Transfiguring light on the land we love.
—Translated by C. E. R.
APPENDIX B
RIZAL AS A PATRIOT, AUTHOR, AND SCIENTIST
By Francis Burton Harrison, Governor-General 1915–21
[Of all the governor-generals the Philippines have had, Mr. Harrison
was the most beloved by the islanders. He seemed to have an instinctive
sympathy with them and after his retirement from office testified to
their worth in a remarkable book, “The Cornerstone of Philippine
Independence.” The comments that follow are extracts from an address he
delivered at the laying of the corner-stone of Rizal Hall, Philippine
University, December 15, 1919.]
Addressing a university audience, I have selected three points in the
life and writing of Dr. Rizal for your consideration. First is his
patriotism. This university must devote its best efforts to teaching
the students of to-day and those of coming generations that form of
pure and unselfish patriotism that we find in the writings and sayings
of Dr. Rizal. We have been gratified to follow the course in debate and
in action of the students of this university in devoting their
attention in a purely non-partizan way to the consideration of public
questions of the day, but I address myself to the faculty as well as to
the students for consideration of the form which that patriotism should
take. In the days of my grandfather young men in America went to
Germany to study at the universities. That was the golden age when the
teachings and memory of Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, and Heine inspired
the youth of the land and brought about a political movement that was
crushed and ended in 1848 in the death of liberalism and the beginning
of modern autocracy. Those of us that were educated in German
literature can scarcely understand the Germany of the last three
decades, and yet, in my opinion, their devotion to the religion of
brutality and force is to be found in the teachings of their modern
university professors—an example that has terrified all mankind and
threatened the liberties of the world. So I say the teaching of pure
patriotism must always be dedicated to the promotion of liberties, the
liberty of thought, of the individual, to the care of the welfare of
the common people, and for the progress and advancement in modern
science of learning of the people of the Philippine Islands.
The literary aspect of Rizal’s works should commend itself to each of
you as an inspiration to do your own duty. I think no man can read
Rizal’s novels without feeling his powerful impulse of sympathy for and
understanding of the people of this country. We can be moved not only
by his profound reading of human nature, but we can also be inspired to
emulate, if we may, the high level of talent for which his name will
ever be famous in the history of literature. Here in the Philippines I
would, if I could, arouse you to more earnest devotion to a literary
career. You have natural advantages second to no country in the world.
Your history is replete with incidents and romance and your present
latter-day development is a true inspiration to the youth of the world
in all countries. Last winter when I returned to New York for my first
vacation home I remember one particularly dark and gloomy day when the
people on the streets, which are nothing more than cañons between high
buildings of stone and glass, were jostling one another without a spark
of human sympathy or appreciation, conscious competitors in the
struggle for the survival of the fittest; and my mind went back to
those scenes of every-day life in the Philippines, to this land of
lofty mountains, of clear water running to the sea, the sunsets across
Mariveles Mountain, the dawn over Mount Arayat, the blue haze upon the
rice-fields in the evening—all the familiar scenes and sounds of a life
animate by the sun and made happy by the richness of nature. As I
remembered the deep and tender lights of the coconut groves and the
busy industry of your daily life, I said to myself, “There is a country
which could inspire any man to literary efforts with all its wealth of
romance.” When I recall the history of the Philippine Islands, the
coming of the Christians with the sword and flaming cross, the coming
of the Mohammedans, with the crescent and the crooked creese and their
cry in many a hard-fought battle, the enterprise of the Spaniard in
spiritual teachings as well as in material investments, the shouts of
Legaspi’s sailors across Manila Bay, the guns of Dewey so many
generations later, the efforts of our country to establish here our
principles of democracy, it seems to me that any young man or woman
born upon this soil and inspired by these ideas has an opportunity to
take a place in the very foremost ranks of literature and history and
show to the world not only what has been done here in education but
what the world may expect of the Filipino people when they take their
rank as an independent member of the brotherhood of nations.
In the scientific aspect of his teachings Rizal ranked high in public
appreciation, higher indeed in other countries than at that time he was
allowed to rank here. He was recognized for his scientific work in
ethnology, in zoölogy, and in botany in England and in the leading
universities of Germany. Upon his death, the most distinguished
scientist in Germany of that day, Professor Virchow, stated that this
was a murder of the most prominent scientist that Spain possessed. In
my opinion Rizal’s greatest services to the cause of the human race
were those scientific impulses which he gave to the world of his duty,
and the martyrdom which he suffered was but another example of the
determination of organized society in every age to eliminate those that
by the pure processes of reason have arrived at new theories for the
conduct and welfare of mankind. From the day of Socrates, who was put
to death by the citizens of Athens for teaching the young men to think
for themselves, down to that morning in December, 1896, when Rizal was
done to death by the firing-squad at Bagumbayan, the pages of history
have run red with the murder of men of science. In Europe of the Middle
Ages the names of Roger Bacon, Giordano Bruno, Galileo, Agrippa,
Campanella, Kepler, Lavoisier, of Priestly, and many others of less
distinction in the annals of history have shown what struggles the
human mind has been called upon to endure and to what stress the human
body has been put in the efforts of science to liberate the human
mind....
Bearing all these things in mind, it seems to me that we can justly
appreciate Rizal’s love of science and his final martyrdom as the
greatest contribution to the freedom of thought ever given by any one
man to the Filipino people. This hall which we are about to dedicate,
reserved as it is to be for the study of science, is the most fitting
monument to the name of Rizal that could be devised. Were he alive
to-day I have no doubt he would feel an infinitely greater inspiration
in the thought that his name was to be attached to this great edifice
and that his memory was to be preserved by the study of young
Filipinos, men and women, in the natural sciences than he would be in
that splendid statue erected down there on the Bagumbayan to perpetuate
the memory of his patriotic death.
Now, my friends, in dedicating this edifice to progress, I believe that
it will stand for progress as long as the Filipino people themselves
remain progressive and as long as you will fight the battle for liberty
of thought and of reason, and, I believe, also, that Dr. Rizal, if he
has any conscious knowledge in those ethereal spaces to which his soul
has been summoned, will summon the youth of his beloved country to dare
all, to endure all, and, if needs be, to suffer all that he himself had
dared, endured, or suffered in order that science may not perish from
the face of the earth.
APPENDIX C
REPRESENTATIVE COOPER’S TRIBUTE
Delivered in the House of Representatives, Washington, June 19, 1902
It has been said that if American institutions had done nothing else
than furnish to the world the character of George Washington, that
alone would entitle them to the respect of mankind. So, sir, I say to
all those that denounce the Filipinos indiscriminately as barbarians
and savages, without possibility of a civilized future, that this
despised race proved itself entitled to their respect and to the
respect of mankind when it furnished to the world the character of José
Rizal.
[Mr. Cooper then recited to the House Rizal’s “Last Farewell” as
described on a foregoing page. The profound silence that fell upon the
chamber at the end of this recital he broke by saying:]
Pirates! Barbarians! Savages! Incapable of civilization! How many of
the civilized Caucasian slanderers of his race could ever be capable of
thoughts like these, which on that awful night, as he sat alone amidst
silence unbroken save by the rustling of the black plumes of the death
angel at his side, poured from the soul of the martyred Filipino?
Search the long and bloody roll of the world’s heroic dead, and where,
on what soil, under what sky, did Tyranny ever claim a nobler victim?
Sir, the future is not without hope for a people that, from the midst
of such an environment, has furnished to the world a character so lofty
and so pure as that of José Rizal.
APPENDIX D
RIZAL’S VIEWS ON THE RACE PROBLEM
From an Article on Rizal in the “International Archiv für
Ethnographie,” by Ferdinand Blumentritt, in part translated and
abridged by R. L. Packard in the “Popular Science Monthly,” July, 1902.
Rizal devoted himself particularly to the analysis of the sentiments
with which the white and the colored races mutually regard each other.
No one was so well qualified as he to study this question, which is of
such importance to folk-psychology, for he was of himself of a colored
race, had lived among his fellow-countrymen at his own home as well as
among the whites, those of mixed bloods, and other classes at Manila,
and had besides come to know Hong-Kong, Japan, Europe, and the United
States and that in a thorough way and not as a mere tourist. His
extensive acquaintance with languages opened for him the ethnological
writings of all civilized nations, and his penetrating intellect
prevented him from remaining content with the surface of things. It
should be said, however, that Rizal concerned himself wholly with the
relations between the white and the colored peoples of the Pacific
because, as he explained, he knew nothing of the psychology of other
colored races.
He said that as a boy he was deeply sensible that the Spaniards treated
him with contemptuous disregard for the sole reason that he was a
Filipino. From the moment when he discovered this attitude of theirs he
endeavored to find out what right the Spaniards and the other whites
generally had to look down upon people who think as they think, study
the same things they study, and have the same mental capacity they
possess, simply because these people have a brown skin and stiff,
straight hair.
Europeans regard themselves as the sovereign masters of the earth, the
only supporters of progress and culture and the sole legitimate species
of the genus Homo sapiens, while they proclaim that all other races are
inferior by refusing to acknowledge their capability of acquiring
European culture, so that, according to the European view, the colored
races are varieties of the genus Homo brutus. Rizal then asked himself,
Are these views just? He began asking this question when he was a
school-boy and at the same time began to answer it by observing his
white fellow-students closely while he studied his own mental processes
and emotions in order to make comparisons.
He soon remarked that in school, at least, no difference could be
detected between the intellectual level of the whites and Filipinos.
There were lazy and industrious, moral and immoral, dull and
intelligent boys among the whites as well as among the Filipino
scholars. Soon this study of race spurred him to exert himself to the
utmost in his school studies, and a kind of race rivalry took
possession of him. He was overjoyed whenever he succeeded in solving a
difficult problem that baffled his white companions. But he did not
regard these events as personal successes so much as triumphs of his
own collective people. Thus it was in school that he first became
convinced that whites go through the same intellectual operations as
Filipinos and—ceteris paribus—progress in the same way and to the same
extent. From this observation he came to the conclusion that whites and
Filipinos have the same intellectual endowment.
In consequence of this conclusion there manifested itself in Rizal, as
he himself avowed, a sort of national self-exaltation. He began to
believe that the Tagalogs must stand higher intellectually than the
Spaniards (the only whites he had known up to that time) and he used to
like to tell how he came to this fallacious conclusion. In the first
place, he said, in his school the whites received instruction in their
own language while the Filipinos had to worry with strange idioms in
order to receive instruction which was given in it alone. The
Filipinos, therefore, must be better endowed intellectually than the
Spaniards, he inferred, since they not only kept up with the Spaniards
in their studies but even surpassed them, although handicapped by a
different language. Still another observation caused him to disbelieve
in the superiority of the European intelligence. He noticed that the
Spaniards believed that the Filipinos looked up to them as beings of a
superior nation and made of a finer clay than themselves. But Rizal
knew very well that the respectfulness the Filipinos manifested toward
the Spaniards did not proceed from self-depreciation but was simply
dictated by fear and self-interest.
By fear because they saw in the Spaniard their lord and master who
oppressed them arbitrarily even with good intentions; by self-interest
because they had observed that his pride of race lays the European open
to flattery and that they could get large concessions from him by a
little subserviency. The Filipinos do not therefore have any real
respect for the European but cringe and bow to him from interested
motives alone. Behind his back they laugh at him, ridicule his
presumption, and regard themselves as in reality the shrewder of the
two races. Because the Spaniards never divined the real sentiment of
the Filipinos toward themselves, young Rizal felt justified in
regarding them as inferior in intelligence to his own countrymen. But
in later years he found it necessary to change this false impression of
his youth, especially as he had found by his own personal experience
how easy it is to draw mistaken conclusions about people of a different
race from one’s own. “Whenever,” he used to say, “I came upon
condemnation of my people by Europeans either in conversation or in
books I recalled these foolish ideas of my youth, my indignation
cooled, and I could smile and quote the French proverb, ‘Tout
comprendre, c’est tout pardonner.’”
Dr. Rizal’s sojourn in Spain opened to him a new world. His
intellectual horizon began to widen with his new experiences. New ideas
thronged in upon him. He came from a land which was the very home of
bigotry, where the Spanish friar, the Spanish official, and the Spanish
soldier governed with absolute sway. But in Madrid he found the exact
opposite of this repression. Free-thinkers and atheists spoke freely in
disparaging terms of religion and the church; the authority of the
Government he found to be at a minimum, while he not only saw Liberals
contending with the Clerical Party but he beheld with astonishment
Republicans and Carlists openly promoting the development of their
political ideas.
Still greater was the influence upon him of his residence in France,
Germany, and England. In those countries he enlarged his scientific
information, or it would be better, perhaps, to say that there the
spirit of modern philology was revealed to him and there he learned the
meaning of the word “ethnology.”
The personal influence of the late Dr. Rost of London was most marked
in the philological training of Dr. Rizal. His teachings and the study
of the works of W. von Humboldt, Jacquet, and Professor H. Kern opened
a new world for the Filipino scholar. He formed a plan to write a work
upon the Tagalog verb, which he afterward modified, and while an exile
in Dapitan in Mindanao he began to write a Tagalog grammar in English
and at the same time prepared an essay upon the allied elements in the
Tagalog and Visayan languages. The former work he intended to dedicate
to Professor Kern, in the name of the Malay race; the latter he wished
to inscribe to the memory of Dr. Rost. It was not granted to him to
complete the manuscript of either, for he was interrupted in the midst
of his work to be dragged about from tribunal to tribunal until his
final sentence and death by public execution.
Fortunately, his work upon the transcription of Tagalog remains to us,
a translation having appeared in the “Bijdragen” of the Indian
Institute. Unfortunately, this work only increased the hatred of his
political opponents, for the Spaniards were very much opposed to any
independent work on the part of the Filipinos, being convinced that
everything of the kind was merely a cloak for separatist views, and
whatever was suspected of separatism in the Philippines was certain of
meeting an unhappy fate.
Rizal, brought up among the Spaniards, was no better instructed than
they themselves in modern ethnology, and, indeed, it was through
Professor Blumentritt’s instrumentality that his attention was first
directed to the defects in his education in that direction, whereupon
he began with ardor to enlarge his knowledge in comparative ethnology.
The works upon general ethnography by Perschel, F. Müller, Waitz,
Gerland, and Ratzel, the ethnographical parallels of André, Wilkins’s
work, the culture-historical publications of Lippert and Helwald became
at once the subject of his industrious and thorough study, a study,
furthermore, that not only enlarged his knowledge but afforded him the
consolation of the assurance that his people were not an anthropoid
race as the Spanish asserted, for he found that the faults and virtues
of the Tagal are entirely human, and, moreover, he became convinced
that the virtues and vices of any people are not mere peculiarities of
a race but inherited qualities, qualities that become affected by
climate and history.
At the same time he continued what he called his “course in practical
ethnology”; that is to say, he studied the life of the French and
German peasants, because he thought that a peasantry preserves national
and race peculiarities longer than the other classes of a people, and
also because he believed he ought to compare only the peasantry of
Europe with his own countrymen, because the latter were nearly all
peasants. With this object in view he withdrew for weeks to some quiet
village where he observed closely the daily life of the country people.
He summed up the results of his scientific and “practical” studies in
the following propositions:
1. The races of man differ in outward appearance and in the
structure of the skeleton but not in their physical qualities. The
same passions and pains affect the white, yellow, brown, and black
races; the same motives influence their actions, only the form in
which the emotions are expressed and the way the actions are
directed are different. Neither is this particular form of conduct
and expression constant with any race or people but varies under
the influence of the most diverse factors.
2. Races exist only for the anthropologists. For a student of the
customs of a people there are only social strata, and it is the
task of the ethnologist to separate and identify these strata. And
just as we mark out the lines of stratification in the mountain
ranges of a geological sketch so ought we to mark out the social
strata of the human race. And just as there are mountains whose
summits do not reach to the highest strata of the geological
system, so there are many people that do not reach the highest
social strata, while the lowest strata are common to all of them.
Even in the old established civilizations of France and Germany a
great proportion of the population forms a class which is upon the
same intellectual level with the majority of the Tagal, and is to
be distinguished from them only by the color of the skin, clothing,
and language. But while mountains do not grow higher, peoples do
gradually grow up into the higher strata of civilization, and this
growth does not depend upon the intellectual capacity alone of a
given people, but it is also due to some extent to good fortune and
to other factors, some of which can be explained and others not.
3. Since not only the statesmen who conduct colonial affairs but
scientific men as well maintain that there are races of limited
intelligence that could never attain the height of European
culture, the real explanation must be as follows: The higher
intelligence may be compared to wealth—there are rich and poor
peoples just as there are rich and poor individuals. The rich man
that believes he was born rich deceives himself. He came into the
world as poor and naked as his slave, but he inherits the wealth
that his parents earned. In the same way intelligence is inherited.
Races that formerly found themselves compelled by certain special
conditions to exercise their mental powers to an unusual extent
have naturally developed their intelligence to a higher degree than
others and they have bequeathed this intelligence to their
descendants, who in turn have increased it by further use.
Europeans are rich in intelligence but the present inhabitants of
Europe could not affirm without presumption that their ancestors
were just as rich in intelligence at the start as they themselves
are now. The Europeans have required centuries of strife and
effort, of fortunate conjunctions, of the necessary ability, of
advantageous laws, and of individual leading men to enable them to
bequeath their intellectual wealth to their present
representatives. The people that are so intelligent to-day have
become so through a long process of transmission and struggles.
History shows that the Romans thought no better of the Germans than
the Spaniards think of the Tagalog, and when Tacitus praises the
Germans he does so in the same style of philosophical idealizing
that we see in the followers of Rousseau, who thought that their
political ideal was realized in Tahaiti.
4. The condemnatory criticism of the Filipinos by the Spaniards is
easy to explain but appears not to be justified. Rizal demonstrated
this in the following way: Weaklings do not emigrate to foreign
lands but only men of energy that travel hence already prejudiced
against the colored races and reach their destination with the
conviction, which is usually sanctioned by law, that they are
called to rule the latter. If we remember, what few white men know,
that the Filipinos fear the brutality of the whites, it is easy to
explain why they make such a poor showing in works written by the
white while they themselves cannot reply in print. If we consider
further that the Filipinos with whom the whites had dealings
belong, for the most part, to the lower strata of society, the
opinions of them given by the whites have about the same value as
that of an educated Tagal would have who should travel to Europe
and judge all Germans and French by the dairy-maids, porters,
waiters, and cab-drivers he might meet.
5. The misfortune of the Filipinos is in the color of their skin
and in that alone. In Europe there are a great many persons that
have risen from the lowest dregs of the populace to the highest
offices and honors. Such people may be divided into two classes,
those that accommodate themselves to their new position without
pretensions and whose origin is consequently not imputed to them as
a disgrace, but on the contrary they are respected as self-made
men; and the conventional parvenus, who are ridiculed and detested
universally.
A Filipino would find himself ordinarily in the second of these two
classes no matter how noble his character or how perfect a
gentleman he might be in his manners and conduct, because his
origin is indelibly stamped upon his countenance, visible to all, a
mark that always carries with it painful humiliations for the
unfortunate native since it for ever exposes him to the prejudices
of the whites. Everything he does is minutely examined; a trifling
error in the toilet, which would be overlooked in a shoemaker’s son
that had acquired the title of baron, and might easily happen to a
pure-blooded descendant of the Montmorencys, in his case excites
amusement and you hear the remark: “What else do you expect? He is
only a native.” But even if he does not infringe any of the rules
of etiquette, and is besides an able lawyer or a skilful physician,
his accomplishments are not taken as a matter of course, but he is
regarded with a kind of good-natured surprise, a feeling much like
the astonishment with which one regards a well trained dog in a
circus, but never as a man of the same capabilities as a white man.
Another reason for the mean opinion in which the Filipinos have
been held by the whites is found in the circumstance that in the
tropics all the servants are colored. They have the defects of
their social class and of servants everywhere. Now, when a German
housewife complains of her servants, she does not extend their bad
qualities to the whole German nation; but this is done unblushingly
by Europeans that live in the tropics, and they never apparently
feel any compunctions but sleep the sleep of the just, undisturbed
by conscience.
The merchants also have contributed to the unfavorable judgment of
the Filipinos. Europeans come to the tropics in order to get rich
as soon as possible, which can only be done by buying from the
natives at astoundingly low rates. The latter, however, do not
regard this proceeding as a really commercial one, but they believe
that the whites are trying to cheat them; and they govern
themselves accordingly by trying, on their side, to overreach the
whites while their dealings with one another are far more
honorable. Consequently the Europeans call the natives liars and
cheats, while it never occurs to them that their own exploiting of
the ignorance of the natives is a conscienceless proceeding, or
rather they believe that, as whites, they are morally justified in
dealing immorally with the natives because the latter are colored.
Dr. Rizal finally came to think that he need no longer wonder at the
prejudice of the whites against his people after he saw in Europe what
unjustifiable prejudices European nations entertain against one
another. He himself was always benevolent and moderate in his judgment
of foreign peoples. His active and keen mind, his personal amiability,
his politeness and manner as a man of the world, and his good and noble
heart gained him friends everywhere, and, therefore, the tragic death
of this intellectually distinguished and amiable man aroused general
concern.
Rizal was an artist of delicate perceptions, a draftsman and sculptor
as well as a scholar and ethnologist. Professor Blumentritt possesses
three statues made by him of terra cotta which might aptly serve as
symbols of his life. One represents Prometheus bound. The second
represents the victory of death over life, and this scene is imagined
with peculiar originality: a skeleton in a monk’s cowl bears in its
arms the inanimate body of a young maiden. The third shows us a female
form standing upon a death’s head and holding a torch in her high
uplifted hands. This is the triumph of knowledge of the soul over
death. Rizal, concludes Professor Blumentritt, was undoubtedly the most
distinguished man not only of his own people but of the Malay race in
general. His memory will never die in his fatherland.
APPENDIX E
SPECIMEN PAGES FROM RIZAL’S DIARY
(It was more a series of notes to assist his memory than a daily record
of events. Some of the entries are illegible.)
Saturday, April 28 (1888). We arrived at San Francisco in the morning.
We anchored. It is said that we shall be quarantined. The Custom House
boat visited us: its flag has this look: [American Customs flag drawn].
The sacks or bags of silk were taken away; a sack costing $700. They
are not afraid of the silk; and they were to take their breakfast on
board.
Sunday, April 29. Second day of the quarantine. We are greatly troubled
and impatient aboard. I have not eaten; it gets my nerve.
Monday, 30. The quarantine is continued. I read in the paper a
statement of the Sanitary Doctor against quarantine.
Tuesday, May 1. The quarantine is continued. We signed a petition
against the quarantine; and the Englishmen wrote to their Consul.
Thursday, May 3. Six days of quarantine.
Friday, May 4, at 3 P.M. the quarantine is ended. I stayed at Palace
Hotel: $4 a day with bath and everything. Stockton-Str. 312. I saw the
Golden Gate.... The Custom House. A letter of recommendation. On Sunday
stores were closed. The best St. in San Francisco is Market St. I took
a walk.—Stanford, the rich man.—A street near the China Town. We left
San Francisco on Sunday, the 6th, at 4.30 P.M.—Sailed till
Oakland—Railroad—On board from Port Costa to Benicia—Plantations—Herds
of cattle—No herdsmen—Stores at the camp—Dinner at Sacramento, 75
cents. We slept in the coach. Regular night. We woke up an hour from
Reno, where we took our breakfast at 7.30 of Monday, May 7.... I saw an
Indian [Indio] attired in semi-European suit, and semi-Indian suit,
leaning against a wall. Wide deserts without plants nor trees.
Unpopulated. Lonely place. Bare mountains. Sands. A big extension of
white land, like chalk. Far from this desert can be seen some blue
mountains. It was a fine day. It was warm, and there was still snow on
the top of some mountains.
Tuesday, May 8: This is a beautiful morning. We stop from place to
place. We are near Ogden. I believe with a good system of irrigation
this place could be cultivated. We are at Utah state, the 3rd. state we
crossed over. In approaching Ogden the fields are seen with horses,
oxen, and trees. Some small houses are seen from a distance. From Ogden
to Denver. The clock is set one hour ahead of time. We are now
beginning to see flowers with yellow color on the way. The mountains at
a distance are covered with snow. The banks of Salt Lake are more
beautiful than other things we saw. The mules are very big. There are
mountains in the middle of the lake like the islands of Talim in Laguna
de Bay. We saw three Mormon boys at Farmington. There were sheep, cows
and horses in the meadows. This region not thickly populated. A flock
of ducks in the lake. There were beautiful houses with trees, straight
streets, flowers, low houses. Children greeted us at Salt Lake City. In
Utah the women serve at the table. It is known that dinner will be
cheap (?). We changed train at Ogden, and we will not have any change
until Denver. In Provo I ate much for 75 cents. We are passing between
two mountains through a narrow channel.
Wed. May 9. We are passing through the mountains of rocks along a
river; the river is noisy and its noise gives life to the lifeless
scenery. We woke up at Colorado the 4th state we crossed over. At 10/30
we climb up a certain height, and this is why snow is seen along the
way. There were many pines. The snow on the mountain top is white and
shiny. We passed through tunnels made of wood, to protect the road
against snow. Icicles in these tunnels are very bright which gives
majestic effect.—The Porter of the Pullman Car, an American, is a sort
of thief.—Colorado has more trees than the three states we passed over.
There are many horses.
Thursday, May 10. We woke up at Nebraska. The country is a plain. We
reached Omaha, a big city at 4 P.M., the biggest since we left San
Francisco. The Missouri river is twice as wide as the Pasig river in
its wide part. It is marshy. Islands are formed in the middle of the
river; its banks are not beautiful. This region has many horses and
cattle. The train passed over the Missouri bridge for 2 and 1/2
minutes; the train goes slowly. We are now in Illinois.
Friday, May 11. We wake up near Chicago. The country is cultivated. It
shows our nearness to Chicago. We left Chicago at 8:1/4 Friday night.
What I observed in Chicago is that every cigar store has an Indian
figure, and always different. (27–75 Washington Street. Boston. Miss C.
G. Smith.)
Saturday, May 12. A good Wagner Car—we are proceeding in a fine day.
The country is beautiful and well populated. We shall arrive at the
English territory in the afternoon, and we shall soon see Niagara
Falls. We stop for some time to see the points that are beautiful; we
went at the side below the Falls; I was between two rocks and this is
the greatest cascade I ever saw. It is not so beautiful nor so fine as
the falls at Los Baños; but much bigger, more imposing and could not be
compared with it. The cascade has various falls, various parts. We left
the place at night. There is a mysterious sound and persistent echo.
Sunday, May 13. We wake up near Albany. This is a big city. The Hudson
river which runs along carries many boats. We crossed over a bridge.
The landscape is beautiful; and it is not inferior to the best in
Europe. We are going along the banks of the Hudson. They are very
beautiful, although a little more solitary than those of the Pasig.
There were ships, boats, trees, hills; and the major part is
cultivated. The Hudson is wide. Beautiful ships. Sliced granite rocks
were paved along the railroads. Some points widely extended. There were
beautiful houses between trees. Day fine. Our grand transcontinental
trip ended on Sunday, May 13. at 11:10 A.M. We passed through various
arches in tunnels:—The Art Age, 75 W. 23 Street.
We left New York on May 16, 1888. There were many people at the dock.
The first and second class entrances are separated. At 9 o’clock sharp
the bell rang to warn the visitors away. At 9 1/30, the pier was full
of people. White handkerchiefs were waved; ribbons and flowers of
different colors are seen here and there.
May 24—Arrived in Liverpool.
A RIZAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. “El Embarque: Himno á la Flota de Magellanes.” (The Departure: Hymn
to Magellan’s Fleet.)
This poem seems to have been dated December 5, 1875, but according to
Rizal’s friends, Vicente Elio and Mariano Ponce, it was written in
1874. It was first published in “La Patria,” Manila, December 30, 1899.
2. “Y Es Espanol: Elcano, el Primero en Dar la Vuelta al Mundo.” (And
He Is Spanish: Elcano, the First to Go Around the World.)
A poem in couplets. Dated December 5, 1875.
3. “El Combate: Urbistondo, Terror de Jolo.” (The Battle: Urbistondo,
the Terror of Jolo.)
A romance, dated December 5, 1875.
4. “Un Diálogo Alusivo á la Despedida de los Colegiales.” (A Dialogue
Embodying His Farewell to the Collegians.)
Rizal mentions this poem as having been delivered toward the end of his
course at the Ateneo, which would mean March, 1876.
5. “Al Niño Jesús.” (To the Child Jesus.)
A poem dated Manila, November 14, but the year is not given. Supposed
to have been written in 1876.
6. “Un Recuerdo á Mi Pueblo.” (A Remembrance to My Town.)
Poem offered by the author at one of the sessions of the Academy of
Literature of the Ateneo. First published in “La Patria,” December 30,
1899. Written about 1876.
7. “Alianza Intima entre la Religión y la Buena Educación.” (Intimate
Bond between Religion and Good Education.)
Dated April 1, 1876.
8. “Por la Educación Recibe Lustre la Patria.” (Through Education the
Country Receives Light.)
Poem written about April 1, 1876. First published in “El Renacimiento,”
January 2, 1906.
9. “El Cautiverio y el Triunfo: Batalla de Lucena y Prisión de
Boabdil.” (The Captivity and the Triumph: Battle of Lucena and the
Imprisonment of Boabdil.)
Poem dated Manila, December 3, 1876.
10. “La Conquista de Granada: Abre la Ciudad sus Puertas á los
Vencedores.” (The Conquest of Granada: Let the City Open Its Gates to
the Conquerors.)
Legend in verse; dated December 3, 1876.
11. “En Año de 1876 á 1877.”
Written by Rizal between 1876 and 1877. A sketch of the history of
Spanish literature.
12. “Cuaderno de Varias Preguntas Escritas por J. R. Mercado.”
(Copy-book of various questions written by J. R. Mercado.)
Notes on history.
13. “Colón y Juan II.” (Columbus and John II.)
Lyric poem composed at the Ateneo.
14. “El Heróismo de Colón.” (The Heroism of Columbus.)
Epic canto, dated December 8, 1877.
15. “Leyenda, Gran Consuelo en la Mayor Desdicha.” (Reading, the Great
Consolation in the Worst Misfortune.)
Poem written at the Ateneo, probably 1877.
16. “A la Juventud Filipina.” (To the Philippine Youth.)
The ode that contains the oblation, “My Fatherland.” First published in
the “Revista del Liceo de Manila, 1879.”
16 b. “A la Juventud Filipina.” (To the Philippine Youth.)
Translation of the foregoing into Tagalog verse by Honorio Lopez, in
the booklet “Ang Buhay ni Dr. José Rizal,” of which Lopez was the
author.
17. “Abd-el-Azis y Mahoma.” (Abd-el-Azis and Mohammed.)
Historical romance, read at the Ateneo by Manuel Fernández y Maniung,
December 8, 1879, at the meeting in honor of the Ateneo’s patron saint.
18. “A Filipinas.” (To the Philippines.)
A sonnet dated February, 1880, and written in the album of the Society
of Sculptors, now extinct. First published in the “Independencia,”
December 29, 1898.
19. “El Consejo de los Dioses.” (The Council of the Gods.)
An allegory written in praise of Cervantes and for the celebration of
his anniversary. First published in the “Revista del Liceo,” 1880.
19 b. “El Consejo de los Dioses.”
The foregoing translated into Tagalog by Pascual H. Poblete, 1905.
20. “Junto al Pasig.” (Beside the Pasig.)
Melodrama in verse. First published in “La Patria,” December 30, 1902.
20 b. “Junto al Pasig.”
Part of the first scene of the foregoing as sung by students in a
religious procession, November 27, 1904. The music was composed by Blas
de Echegoyen.
20 c. “Sa Virgen ng Antipolo.”
Translation into Tagalog verse of the children’s chorus in “Junta al
Pasig,” by Honorio Lopez.
21. “Al M. R. P. Pablo Ramon, Rector del Ateneo, en sus Dias.” (To his
Reverence Pablo Ramon, Rector of the Ateneo.)
An ode dated January 25, 1881.
22. “A la Virgen Maria.” (To the Virgin Mary.)
A sonnet first published by “La Alborada,” Manila, December 30, 1901.
23. “Memorias Intimas.” (Intimate Memories.)
Impressions since leaving Calamba, May 1, 1882, and until May 3, 1883.
24. “El Amor Patrio.” (Love for the Fatherland.)
Article published under the pseudonym “Laong Laan” in the “Diariong
Tagalog,” Manila, August 20, 1882—the first article he wrote in Europe.
24 a. “Ang Pag Ibig sa Tinubuang Lupa.”
Tagalog translation of the foregoing and printed at the same time.
25. “Los Viajes.” (The Voyages.)
Article in “Diariong Tagalog,” 1882.
25 b. “Ang Pangingibang Lupa.”
Tagalog translation of the foregoing and printed at the same time.
26. “Me Piden Versos!” (You Ask Me for Verses.)
Poem, for which see Appendix. Dated Madrid, Oct 7, 1882. First printed
in “La Solidaridad.”
26 b. “Pinatutula Ako!”
Tagalog translation of foregoing.
27. “Las Dudas.” (Doubts.)
Article published under the pseudonym “Laong Laan” in Madrid, November
7, 1882.
28. “Revista de Madrid.” (Review of Madrid.)
An article dated Madrid, November 29, 1882, written under the name
“Laong Laan” for the “Diariong Tagalog” and returned because that
journal had ceased to exist.
29. “P. Jacinto: Memorias de un Estudiante de Manila.” (P. Jacinto:
Memories of a Student of Manila.)
Refers to himself. Written after his arrival in Madrid, 1882.
30. “La Instrucción.” (Instruction.)
Probably written after his arrival in Madrid in 1882.
31. “Apuntes de Obstetricia.” (Notes on Obstetrics.)
Found in a copy-book.
32. “Apuntes clínicos.” (Clinical Notes.)
Madrid, not dated.
33. “Lecciones de Clínica Médica.” (Lessons in Medical Clinical
Procedure.)
Madrid, October 4, 1883, to May 29, 1884.
34. “Filipinas Desgraciada.” (The Unfortunate Philippines.)
Article describing the calamities of 1880–82. Written in Madrid.
35. “Discurso-Brindis.” (Reply to a Toast.)
Speech at the Café de Madrid night of December 31, 1883.
36. A historical novel, unfinished.
Five chapters. He began to write it in Madrid while a student there. It
has no title.
37. “A la Señorita C. O. y R.” (To Miss Consuelo Ortiga y Rey.)
Poem written in Madrid, August 22, 1883, first published in “El
Renacimiento,” December 29, 1904.
38. “Sobre el Teatro Tagalo.” (On the Tagalog Theater.)
Written May 6, 1884, refuting an attack made by Manuel Lorenzo d’ Ayot.
Published in Madrid.
39. “Discurso-Brindis.” (Reply to a Toast.)
Speech made in Madrid, June 25, 1884, which received great newspaper
notoriety.
40. “Costumbres Filipinas: un Recuerdo.” (Philippine Customs: a
Memory.)
An incomplete article, written in Madrid, 1884 or 1885.
41. “La Fête de Saint Isidro.”
Not dated. Written in French.
42. “Notes on Field Fortifications.”
Written in English about 1885. Found in a clinic note-book.
43. “Llanto y Risas.”
An uncompleted article, written in Madrid between 1884 and 1886.
44. “Memorias de un Gallo.” (Memories of a cock.)
Incomplete. Mutilated.
45. “Apuntes de Literatura Española, de Hebreo, y de Arabe.” (Notes on
Spanish, Hebrew, and Arabian Literature.)
Not dated. Notes in a copy-book.
46. “Semblanzas de Algunos Filipinos Compañeros en Europa.”
Closely Noted Observations on Certain Filipinos Then Residing in
Europe.
47. “Estado de Religiosidad de los Pueblos en Filipinas.” (Religious
State of the Towns in the Philippines.)
Unpublished.
48. “Pensamiento de un Filipino.” (Thoughts of a Filipino.)
An unpublished article, date unknown.
49. “Un Librepensador.” (A Free-Thinker.)
An unpublished article. Probably written in Madrid.
50. “Los Animales de Juan.” (John’s Animals.)
An unpublished story.
51. “A S....” (To S——)
Poem dated November 6, ——.
52. “A....” (To ——)
Poem, not dated; rough draft.
53. “Mi Primer Recuerdo: Fragmento de Mis Memorias.” (My First
Recollection: Fragments of My Memories.)
All these last few works seem to have been written while Rizal was a
student in Madrid.
54. “Juan Luna.”
Article, published in the “Revista Hispano-Americana,” of Barcelona,
February 28, 1886, carrying a front-page portrait of the great Filipino
painter.
55. “A las Flores de Heidelberg.” (To the Flowers of Heidelberg.) Poem
dated Heidelberg, April 22, 1886. Signed “Laong Laan,” first published
in “La Solidaridad.”
56. “Madrid.”
An epistolary chronicle, written in French from Germany in 1886. First
published in “Nuestro Tiempo” in February, 1905.
57. “Crítica Literaria.”
Not dated. Criticisms in French on “Tartarin sur les Alpes” and “Le
Pistolet de la Petit Baronne.” Germany, 1886.
58. “Essai sur Pierre Corneille.”
In French. Germany, 1886.
59. “Tinipong Karunungan ng Kaibigan Ng mga Taga Rhin.”
Beginning of a translation of a book by Hebel into Tagalog.
60. “Une Soirée chez M. B....”
Written in Berlin, in French. Unpublished sketch. No date.
61. “Noli Me Tangere.” Berlin, March, 1887.
His first complete novel.
61 b. “Noli Me Tangere.”
Second edition, Manila, Chofre & Co., 1899.
61 c. “Noli Me Tangere.”
Third edition, Valencia, Sempere, 1902. Somewhat shortened and with
mutilations.
61 d. “Noli Me Tangere.”
Fourth edition, Barcelona, Maucci, 1903. With a short prologue by Ramon
Sempau.
61 e. “Au Pays des Moines.”
French translation of 61 by Henri Lucas and Ramon Sempau. Paris, 1899.
With a few notes.
61 f. “An Eagle’s Flight.”
Abbreviated English translation. New York: McClure, Phillips & Co.,
1900.
61 g. “Friars and Filipinos.”
Another English translation, somewhat fuller than 61 f, by F. E.
Gannet. New York, 1907.
61 h. German translation of “Noli Me Tangere.”
Never finished, by Dr. Blumentritt.
61 i. “Noli Me Tangere.”
Tagalog translation by Paciano Rizal, brother of the author. Rizal
himself revised and corrected the sheets.
61 j. “Noli Me Tangere.”
Tagalog translation by P. H. Poblete.
61 k. “Noli Me Tangere.”
Cebuana translation by Vicente Sotto.
61 l. “Tulang na sa ‘Noli.’”
The song from Chap. XXIII translated into Tagalog by M. H. del Pilar.
1888.
61 m. “Noli Me Tangere” (Extracts).
Translations of chapters, paragraphs, and sentences into many dialects
in broadside form for general distribution in the islands.
61 n. “Ang ‘Noli Me Tangere.’”
Playlet performed on Rizal’s birthday. Mentioned in “El Renacimiento,”
Manila, 1905.
61 o. “The Social Cancer.”
A complete English Version of “Noli Me Tangere,” from the Spanish of
José Rizal by Charles Derbyshire (with a life of Rizal), Manila,
Philippine Education Company, 1912.
62. “Histoire d’ une Mère.”
A Tale of Andersen’s. Translation from German to French. Berlin, March
5, 1887.
63. “Tagalische Verskunst.”
Work read before the Ethnographical Society of Berlin, April, 1887, and
published the same year, by that society.
63 b. “Arte Métrica del Tagalog.” (Metrical Art of the Tagalogs.)
Spanish translation, made by Rizal, of the foregoing work. Amplified.
64. “Autocrítica de ‘Noli Me Tangere.’” (Self-Criticism of “Noli Me
Tangere.”)
An unpublished article in French.
65. “An Account of the Life and Writings of Mr. James Thompson.” By
Patrick Murdoch.
A study in English literature. 1887. Unpublished.
66. “Deducciones. El, segun El, Por un Pigmeo.” (Deductions, by
himself, a pigmy.)
Published in “España en Filipinas,” Madrid, April, 1887.
67. “Dudas.” (Doubts.)
Madrid, May 28, 1887. Published in “España en Filipinas.”
68. “En las Montañas.” (In the Mountains.)
Poem written in Germany in 1887.
69. “El Historiador de Filipinas Fernando Blumentritt.” (The Historian
of the Philippines, Fernando Blumentritt.)
July 7, 1887. “España en Filipinas.”
70. “De Heidelberg á Leipzig, Pasando por el Rhin.” (From Heidelberg to
Leipzig, along the Rhine.)
Notes of travel.
71. “De Marsella á Manila.” (From Marseilles to Manila.)
Notes of travel.
72. “Traducción de Poesías Alemanes al Tagalo.” (Translation of German
Poems into Tagalog.)
Done in Calamba about 1887 or 1888. Unpublished.
73. “Guillermo Tell: Trahediang Tinula ni Schiller sa Wikang Aleman.”
(William Tell.)
Tagalog translation in which he used the new method of spelling.
74. “Informe al Administrador de Hacienda pública de la Laguna acerca
de la Hacienda de los PP. Dominicos en Calamba.” (Report to the
Administrator of Public Finance of La Laguna about the Estate of the
Dominican Friars in Calamba.)
Rizal’s report in the tax fight. It was signed by the justice of the
peace, the board of officers, and seventy leading men of the Calamba
district. Mr. Ponce describes it as the first stone thrown in the
bitter contest that ensued between the village and the powerful
religious corporation. It was published as an appendix to “La Soberanía
Monacal,” by M. H. del Pilar. The date was early in 1888.
75. “Diario de Viaje a Través de Norte-America.” (Diary of Trip across
North America.)
April–May of 1888. See Appendix.
76. “Notas, en Colaboración con el Dr. A. B. Meyer y el Dr. F.
Blumentritt, á un Códice Chino de la Edad Media, Traducido al Aleman
por el Dr. Hirth.” (Notes, Collaborated with Dr. A. B. Meyer and Dr. F.
Blumentritt, on an old Chinese Manuscript of the Middle Ages,
Translated into German by Dr. Hirth.)
Published in “La Solidaridad,” April 30, 1889.
77. “Specimens of Tagal Folk-Lore.”
London, May, 1889. “Trübner’s Record.” Composed of three parts:
proverbial sayings, puzzles, verses.
78. “La Verdad para Todos.” (The Truth for All.)
Article. Barcelona, May 31, 1889. Published in “La Solidaridad.”
79. “Barrantes y el Teatro Tagalo.” (Barrantes and the Tagalog
Theater.)
Article, published in “La Solaridad,” Barcelona, June, 1889.
80. “Two Eastern Fables.”
In “Trübner’s Record,” London, June, 1889. English.
81. “La Visión de Fr. Rodríguez.” (The Vision of Friar Rodriguez.)
Barcelona, 1889. Under the pseudonym “Dimas Alang,” a booklet published
surreptitiously.
81 b. “The Vision of Friar Rodriguez.”
English version made by F. M. de Rivas and published in the book “The
Story of the Philippine Islands” by Murat Halstead, Chicago, 1898.
82. A novel in Spanish.
No title. Rizal began it in 1889, left unfinished.
83. “Por Teléfono.” (By Telephone.)
Under the pseudonym “Dimas Alang,” a handbill published
surreptitiously.
84. “Verdades Nuevas.” (New Truths.)
Article in “La Solidaridad,” Barcelona, July 31, 1889.
85. “Una Profanación.” (A profanation.)
Anonymous article. “La Solaridad,” July 31, 1889. In this he told of
the disinterring by the friars of the body of Herbosa.
86. “Diferencias.” (Differences.)
An article in “La Solidaridad,” Barcelona, September 15, 1889.
87. “Filipinas dentro de Cien Años.” (The Philippines a Century Hence.)
Four articles in “La Solidaridad,” 1889 and 1890.
88. “A Nuestra Querida Madre Patria!!! España!!!” (To Our Beloved
Mother-Country!!! Spain!!!)
Proclamation in sheet form, three columns. Paris, 1889. Ironical.
89. “A La Patria.” (To the Home-Land.)
Article in “La Solidaridad,” Madrid, November 15, 1889.
90. “Inconsecuencias.” (Inconsequences.)
Article against “El Pueblo Soberano” of Barcelona. Madrid, November 30,
1889.
91. “En la Ausencia.” (Absence.)
A poem written in Paris, 1889.
92. “Sa Mga Kababay-ang Dalaga sa Malolos.”
A letter headed “Europe, 1889.”
93. “Notas a la Obra, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, por el Dr.
Antonio de Morga.” (Notes to Happenings in the Philippines by Dr.
Antonio de Morga.)
Prologue by Professor Blumentritt. December, 1889.
94. “Ingratitudes.” (Ingratitudes.)
Article in “La Solidaridad,” January 15, 1890.
95. “Al Excmo. Sr. D. Vicente Barrantes.” (To his Excellency Sr. D.
Vicente Barrantes.)
Article in “La Solidaridad,” Madrid, February 15, 1890.
96. “Sin Nombre.” (Without Name.)
Article in “La Solidaridad,” Madrid, February 28, 1890.
97. “Filipinos en el Congreso.” (Filipinos in the Assembly.)
“La Solidaridad,” March 31, 1890.
98. “Seamos Justos.” (Let Us Be Just.)
Article in “La Solidaridad,” Madrid, April 15, 1890.
99. “Sobre la Nueva Ortografia de la Lengua Tagalog.” (On the new
spelling of the Tagalog language.)
“La Solidaridad,” April 15, 1890.
99 b. “Die Transcription des Tagalog von Dr. José Rizal.”
Translated into German by F. Blumentritt with comments.
100. “Cosas de Filipinas.” (Things Philippine.)
Article in “La Solidaridad,” Madrid, April 30, 1890.
100 b. “Más sobre el Asunto de Negros.” (More Concerning the Affair in
Negros.)
Second part of the above article appearing May 15, 1890.
101. “Una Esperanza.” (A Hope.)
Article in “La Solidaridad,” Madrid, July 15, 1890.
102. “Sobre la Indolencia de los Filipinos.” (Filipino Indolence.)
“La Solidaridad,” Madrid, July–September 15, 1890.
103. “Venganzas Cobardes.” (Cowardly Vengeance.)
Anonymous article. “La Solidaridad,” August 31, 1890.
104. “A la memoria de José Maria Panganiban.” (To the Memory of José
Maria Panganiban.)
A meditation in “La Solidaridad,” Madrid, September 30, 1890.
105. “Una Contestación á Isabelo de los Reyes.” (An Answer to Isabelo
de los Reyes.)
Article in “La Solidaridad,” Madrid, October, 1890.
106. “Las Luchas de Nuestros Días.” (The strifes of Our Day.)
Two criticisms of the work “Pi y Margall” appearing in “La
Solidaridad,” Madrid, November 30, 1890.
107. “Como Se Gobiernan las Filipinas.” (How the Philippines Are
Governed.)
“La Solidaridad,” December 15, 1890.
108. “A Mi Musa.” (To My Muse.)
Poem under the pseudonym “Laong Laan,” published in “La Solidaridad,”
Madrid, December 31, 1890.
109. “Mariang Makiling.”
Legend. Under the pseudonym “Laong Laan,” published in “La
Solidaridad,” December 31, 1890.
109 b. “Mariang Makiling.”
Tagalog translation of the foregoing. This was the last work that Rizal
did for “La Solidaridad.”
110. “Discurso en el Banquete de la Colonia Filipina de Madrid en la
Noche del 31 de Diciembre de 1890.” (Speech at the Banquet of the
Philippine Colony of Madrid, held in that city on the Evening of
December 31, 1890.)
111. “El Filibusterismo: Novela Filipina.” (Filibusterism.)
Ghent, 1891. First edition, rare. Fragments were published by papers in
Spain in 1891.
111 b. “El Filibusterismo.”
Second edition. Manila, Chofre & Co., 1900.
111 c. “El Filibusterismo.”
Tagalog translation by P. H. Poblete, 1904.
111 d. “El Filibusterismo: Novela Filipina.”
Third edition. Prologada y anotada por W. E. Retana. Barcelona, de
Henrich and Company. 1908.
111 e. “The Reign of Greed.”
A complete English version of “El Filibusterismo,” from the Spanish of
José Rizal by Charles Derbyshire. Manila, Philippine Education Company,
1912.
112. “Diario de Viaje de Marsella a Hong-Kong.” (Diary of a Voyage from
Marseilles to Hong-Kong.)
Unpublished. Written in 1891.
113. “Ang Mga Karapatan Nang Tao.”
Tagalog translation of the Rights of Man proclaimed by the French
revolutionists of 1789. This was probably done during his stay in
Hong-Kong and is what the Filipinos call a “proclamation.”
114. “A la Nación Española.” (To the Spanish Nation.)
Hong-Kong, 1891. An undated proclamation, written in Hong-Kong about
November, 1891. Refers to the land question in Calamba.
115. “Sa Mga Kababayan.”
Sheet printed in Hong-Kong in December, 1891. It deals with the land
question of Calamba.
116. “La Exportación del Azucar Filipino.” (Exportation of Philippine
Sugar.)
An article printed in Hong-Kong about 1892.
117. “Estatutos y Reglamentos de la Liga Filipina.” (Statutes and Rules
of the Philippine League.)
Written in Hong-Kong, 1892.
118. “Una Visita a la Victoria Gaol.” (A Visit to Victoria Jail.)
Written in Hong-Kong in March, 1892, describing his visit to the city
jail.
119. “Colonisation du British North Borneo, par des Families des Iles
Philippines.” (Colonization of British North Borneo by families from
the Philippine Islands.)
He also did this work in Spanish.
119 b. “Proyecto de Colonización del British North Borneo por
Filipinos.”
An elaboration of the same idea. No date, but it is known that he wrote
this at about the time of his trip to Borneo in April, 1892.
120. “La Mano Roja.” (The Red Hand.)
Sheet printed in Hong-Kong, June, 1892, calling attention to the number
of fires started intentionally in Manila.
120 b. “Ang Mapulang Kamay.”
Translation of above, published in 1894.
121. “A los Filipinos! (Testamento público.)” (To the Filipinos.)
Dated at Hong-Kong, June 20, 1892. Published in various newspapers of
the country. The address to his countrymen to be made public in case of
his death.
122. “Notas de Sucesos desde su Desembarco en Manila, Procedente de
Hong-Kong, hasta su Deportación y Llegada a Dapitan. 1892.” (Notes of
Events from his Landing in Manila Arriving from Hong-Kong up to his
Deportation and Arrival at Dapitan, 1892.)
123. “Cartas Filosofico-Religiosas de Controversia con el P. Pablo
Pastells, S. J.” (Letters of His Philosophical-Religious Controversy
with P. Pablo Pastells, S. J.)
124. “Etnografia de la Isla de Mindanao.” (Ethnography of the Island of
Mindanao.)
Translated from the German of F. Blumentritt.
125. “Ampliación a Mi Mapa.” (Enlargement of My Map.)
Map of the Island of Mindanao, translated into Spanish by Rizal and
dedicated to F. Blumentritt.
126. “Estudios sobre la Lengua Tagala.” (Studies on the Tagalog
Tongue.)
Written in Dapitan in 1893 and first published in “La Patria” of Manila
in 1899.
126 b. “Manga Pag-Aaral sa Wikang Tagalog na Sinulat ni Dr. José
Rizal.”
Tagalog translation of the foregoing by Honorio Lopez.
127. “Canto del Viajero.” (Song of the Traveler.)
Poem written in Dapitan. First published in 1903.
128. “Dapitan.”
Introduction to a work which was never followed up.
129. “Avesta: Vendidad.”
An uncompleted Spanish translation.
130. “Fragmentos de una Novela Inédita y sin Concluir.” (Fragments of
an Incomplete and Unpublished Novel.)
Written in Dapitan. Fragments of a novel.
131. “Makamisa.”
Verses beginning a novel in Tagalog. Never completed.
132. “Sociedad de Agricultores Dapitanos.” (Society of Dapitan
Farmers.)
Statutes and by-laws, Dapitan, 1895.
133. “Mi Retiro: A Mi Madre.” (My Retirement: To My Mother.)
Poem written in Dapitan, 1895. First published in “República Filipina”
in 1898.
133 b. “Ang Ligpit Kong Pamumuhay: Sa Aking Ina.”
Tagalog translation of the above by Honorio Lopez.
134. “Himno a Talisay.” (Hymn to Talisay.)
Composed in Dapitan, October 13, 1895.
135. “La Curación de los Hechizados.” (The Cure for the Bewitched.)
An article believed to be unpublished.
136. “Comparative Tagalog Grammar.”
Written in English. Incomplete.
137. “Datos para Mi Defensa.” (Points for My Defense.)
Written in Santiago Prison, December 12, 1896.
138. “Manifiesto—a Algunos Filipinos.” (Manifesto—To Certain
Filipinos.)
Manila, Santiago Prison, December 15, 1896. This was published by many
newspapers in the country.
139. “Adiciones a Mi Defensa.” (Additions to My Defense.)
Manila, December 26, 1896.
140. “Ultimo pensamiento.” (Last Thoughts.)
The poem written in the chapel, a few nights before his death. The
original manuscript was unsigned and written on ordinary ruled paper.
Alcohol stains (from the lamp) can still be seen on the original where
it blurred the ink. The above title was given to the poem by Mr. Ponce.
Under the title “Ultimo Adiós” (My Last Farewell) it was published in
“La Independencia,” September 25, 1898.
It has been translated into many languages, including the island
dialects, French, English, German, Chinese, and Japanese.
141. “French Composition Exercises,” by José Rizal, B. A., Ph. M., L.
C. M. (Madrid), Postgraduate student in Paris, Leipzig, Heidelberg,
Berlin and London. Manila, 1912. Philippine Education Company.
142. “The Indolence of the Filipino,” by José Rizal, translated by
Charles Derbyshire, edited by Austin Craig, Manila, 1913.
143. “Rizal’s Own Story of His Life.” National Book Company, 1918.
Contains also “Rizal’s First Reading Lesson,” “Rizal’s Childhood
Impressions,” “The Spanish Schools of Rizal’s Boyhood,” “The Turkey
That Caused the Calamba Land Trouble,” “Mariang Makiling,” and other
short pieces.
144. “Manila en 1872.”
An article by Rizal discovered after his death and published in the
Manila “Citizen,” January 9, 1919.
145. “Cartas á un Jesuita.”
Another posthumous article, published in the Manila “Citizen,” February
7, 1919.
The following books and articles relating to Rizal may also be noted:
“The Story of Rizal,” Hugh Clifford, “Blackwood’s,” November, 1902.
“Rizal’s Views on Race Differences,” “Popular Science Monthly,” July,
1902.
“The Future of the Philippines,” M. F. Steele, “The Nation,” March 27,
1902.
“A Filipino That Died for His Country,” “Literary Digest,” July 26,
1919.
“Rizal’s Picture of the Philippines under Spain,” “Review of Reviews,”
May, 1913.
“The Martyred Novelist of the Philippines,” “Current Opinion,” April,
1913.
“The Malay Novelist,” “The Nation,” January 9, 1913.
“The Composite Rizal,” “The Nation,” April 10, 1913.
“The Life of José Rizal, a Chronology by Austin Craig,” “The Manila
Independent,” December 31, 1921.
“Autógrafos de Rizal,” Fernando Canon, “The Manila Independent,”
December 31, 1921.
“Páginas Inéditas de Rizal” (Dapitan), “Dia Filipino,” Manila, June 19,
1918.
“Rizal en Hong-Kong,” by Vicente Sotto, in “Renacimiento Filipino,”
Manila, July 7, 1913.
“Rizal’s Story of His Life,” the Manila “Citizen,” August and
September, 1918.
“Rizal and Philippine Nationalism,” by José Melencio, the Manila
“Citizen,” February 21, 1919.
“Rizal as a Historian,” by Austin Craig, “Philippine Herald,” Manila,
July 10, 1921.
“The Song of the Wanderer,” translated by Arthur Ferguson, “Dia
Filipino,” June, 1918.
“The Song of the Wanderer,” translated by Charles Derbyshire,
“Philippine Journal of Education,” Manila, December, 1919.
“To My Muse,” translated by Charles Derbyshire, “Philippine Journal of
Education,” December, 1919.
“To the Flowers of Heidelberg,” translated by Charles Derbyshire,
“Philippine Journal of Education,” December, 1919.
“Rizal as a Poet,” by Eliseo Hervas, “Philippine Journal of Education,”
1919.
“Inspiring Traits of Rizal’s Character,” by Ignacio Villamor,
“Philippine Journal of Education,” December, 1919.
“Rizal as a Patriot, Author, and Scientist,” by former Governor-General
Francis Burton Harrison, “Philippine Journal of Education,” December,
1919.
“Rizal as a Scientist,” Benito Soliven, “Philippine Journal of
Education,” December, 1919.
“Rizal’s Character,” by T. H. Pardo de Tavera, published by the Manila
Filatélica, 1918.
“The Story of José Rizal,” by Austin Craig, published by the Philippine
Education Publishing Company, 1909.
“Revista Filipina,” Manila, December, 1916, a Rizal number, with
articles by Mariano Ponce, Epifanio de los Santos, and others.
“Murió el Doctor Rizal Cristianamente? Reconstitución de las Ultimas
Horas de Su Vida.” Estudio Histórico por Gonzalo M. Piñana, Barcelona,
1920.
NOTES
[1] Craig, p. 83; Derbyshire, p. xvi. Blair and Robertson, “The
Philippine Islands,” Vol. LII, p. 170.
[2] “Noli Me Tangere,” Chap. LVII.
[3] Created after one of the many insurrections and contributing to the
causes of the insurrection of 1872. Craig, p. 80.
[4] Craig, pp. 86–87.
[5] Born 1792, died 1872. He was once governor of Hong-Kong.
[6] Craig, p. 88.
[7] The ease with which false accusations could be manufactured, as
Rizal showed afterward in his novels, was a valid asset in Spanish
supremacy.
[8] Rizal, in his “Boyhood Story,” merely says her innocence was shown
and she was released. It was Dr. Craig that, investigating the facts on
the spot, came upon the incident of the dance and the pardon. At the
time Rizal could hardly have published it.
[9] Retana, p. 15; Craig, Chap. II.
[10] Rizal, “Childhood Impressions,” p. 1.
[11] About seven thousand in all, including rocks and reefs.
[12] In “El Progreso Material,” “The National Forum,” July, 1922.
[13] To be discussed in a later chapter.
[14] Craig and Benitez, “Philippine Progress Prior to 1898.”
[15] Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, and the Recollect Fathers.
Compare Barrows, “History of the Philippines,” p. 121.
[16] Fernández, “A Brief History of the Philippines,” p. 136.
[17] The Philippine Independence Mission of 1922 estimated the number
at one hundred, great and small.
[18] Barrio: hamlet. Most Philippine farmers live gregariously.
[19] From 1844 to 1850. He was one of the reforming governor-generals
and left a name more revered than the others.
[20] Retana, pp. 14–15.
[21] Craig, pp. 61, 63.
[22] Derbyshire.
[23] College of Santa Rosa.
[24] Rizal’s “Boyhood Story,” “The First Reading Lesson.”
[25] Craig, p. 78.
[26] Azotea: the roof of the porch of a Philippine house, usually at
the rear.
[27] His “Boyhood Story,” p. 4.
[28] Sinamay: a native cloth woven of abaca (hemp) and sometimes of the
fiber that is called “pineapple.”
[29] Mabolo: the date-plum, a reddish fruit, looking something like an
apple, but turnip-shaped.
[30] The Jesuits were not one of the four orders that figure so
conspicuously in this story. They had been banished from the
Philippines as from Spain in 1767, and all their insular property,
valued at 3,320,000 pesos, was confiscated by the Government. In 1852
another royal decree allowed them to return, but they never regained
their former prominence and power.
[31] Craig, p. 82.
[32] Craig, p. 83; Derbyshire, p. xvi; Fernández, p. 226.
[33] Retana, pp. 18, 19.
[34] See Dr. Blumentritt’s article, Appendix D.
[35] Dr. Blumentritt; see Appendix D.
[36] “Blackwood’s,” November, 1902, p. 620.
[37] “Boyhood Story,” p. vi.
[38] “Boyhood Story,” p. 19.
[39] With a girl older than he was and already engaged to another. She
seems to have been something of a flirt. A few years afterward he wrote
(apparently for himself) an account of his feelings and sufferings in
those days. Mariano Ponce, his friend and confidant, published the
document in the “Revista Filipina,” December, 1916. It shows Rizal to
have been a poetical and dreamy lover. When he discovered the hopeless
nature of his attachment he wandered alone in the woods, given up to a
melancholy conviction of misfortune, but recovered in time to fall in
love again and learn the reality of his forebodings.
[40] The professor speaks these words in the vulgar dialect.
[41] “El Filibusterismo,” Chap. XIII. Derbyshire’s translation.
[42] “Boyhood Story”: v.
[43] Craig, p. 92.
[44] These poems are printed by Retana, pp. 26–29. A translation of one
of them is attempted for the first time in the Appendix A of this work.
[45] London, 1875.
[46] Craig, p. 95.
[47] Craig, pp. 696–98.
[48] Rizal’s “Boyhood Story.”
[49] Retana, p. 31.
[50] See Appendix A.
[51] Craig, pp. 109–110.
[52] “Fair hope of my fatherland.”
[53] See Appendix A.
[54] Craig, p. 109.
[55] It was founded in 1603, only thirty-three years after the capture
of Manila and the beginning of the Spanish domination.
[56] Retana.
[57] Craig, p. 109; Retana, pp. 34–35.
[58] His father’s sore difficulties, to be described later, were then
beginning. Mr. Mercado continued to send money regularly to José
through Mr. Rivera, the detour being necessary to protect himself.
[59] Craig, p. 111; Retana, pp. 56 and 57.
[60] Craig, p. 117; Retana, p. 59; Derbyshire, p. xxvii.
[61] While he was in the Philippines on the occasion of his first
return there, 1887, he had with him a considerable collection of books
in many languages but scarcely any in Spanish. A friend once called his
attention to this fact and asked why he omitted Spanish books. “Well,”
said Rizal, in his quiet way but with a twinkle in his eyes, “if they
can’t read them they will not borrow them, will they?”
[62] Fernando Canon, Manila “Citizen,” December 31, 1921.
[63] Craig, p. 99.
[64] Craig, p. 76.
[65] Senator Sandiko’s recollections.
[66] Retana, p. 99.
[67] Craig, p. 126; Retana, pp. 103–105.
[68] For example, “The Flowers of Heidelberg,” printed in “La
Solidaridad,” December 15, 1889.
[69] Mr. Derbyshire, a discriminating critic, calls it “a story
pulsating with life.”
[70] Compare Derbyshire, p. xxxi.
[71] “Noli Me Tangere,” Chaps. LII and LVII.
[72] To western readers this will seem impossible. There are, however,
attested instances of the savage practice.
[73] A vein of strange coincidence that seems almost like some
intuition runs through Rizal’s novels. What happened to the ashes of
the elder Ibarra in the story is exactly what happened a few years
later to the ashes of Rizal’s brother-in-law.
[74] “The letter enters with the blood.” This was the favorite motto of
Dr. Cruz, master of the school at Biñan, the first that Rizal attended.
The protest here against corporal punishment in schools is doubtless
sharpened from Rizal’s own experiences.
[75] “Noli Me Tangere,” Chap. XIX, Derbyshire’s translation.
[76] “Noli Me Tangere,” Chap. L, Derbyshire’s translation.
[77] Retana prints the original of this letter (in French) at pp.
125–126.
[78] For most of the information we have of this interesting young
woman we are indebted to Miss Salud Sevilla of the College of
Education, University of the Philippines, who traced her story and
verified and illuminated the incidents here related.
[79] Retana, pp. 79–90, cites other references to letters received from
and written to Leonora, indicating a prosperous correspondence.
[80] Craig, pp. 217–218.
[81] Miss Sevilla.
[82] Miss Sevilla.
[83] Craig, p. 219, and Miss Sevilla.
[84] A fact communicated by Mr. Fernando Canon.
[85] The title-page bears this imprint: “Berlin, Berliner
buchdruckerei-actien-geselschaft.”
[86] Mr. Canon’s manuscript.
[87] Retana gives the findings and the letter of the archbishop, pp.
128–130.
[88] Derbyshire, p. xxxiii.
[89] Craig, p. 131; Retana, p. 135.
[90] Craig, p. 133.
[91] By this time, no doubt, he surmised that his love-affair had gone
wrong, but he had no final confirmation of this misadventure until he
reached Manila.
[92] Mr. Canon’s manuscript.
[93] Derbyshire, p. xxxiv.
[94] Craig, p. 137; Retana, pp. 144–145.
[95] It is customary to pretend otherwise, but this is the real heart
of modern imperialism.
[96] Derbyshire, p. xxxiv.
[97] Craig, p. 138.
[98] It is the whole philosophy of “Noli Me Tangere.”
[99] Ladrones and Carolines were groups of islands in the South Seas
that Spain owned and misgoverned.
[100] Craig, p. 140.
[101] Retana, p. 150. He sees nothing remarkable in these suddenly
cordial relations.
[102] Rizal’s diary: see Appendix E. Retana (p. 152) prints a letter
from Rizal to his friend Mariano Ponce in which he allows himself a
little sarcasm about some of these experiences.
[103] Published in Mexico in 1609. De Morga had been in the Philippines
from 1595 to 1605. Retana, pp. 172–173.
[104] This is confirmed by the recent investigations of Craig and
Benitez, “Philippine Progress Prior to 1898.” No one denied or denies
the existence of uncivilized or scantly civilized tribes in the
interior. De Morga was speaking about the people near the coast.
Skepticism about early Filipino civilization is a necessary waiter at
the heels of whomsoever wishes to defend imperialism.
De Morga’s work, newly translated, is printed in Blair and Robertson,
Vol. XV.
[105] Craig, p. 146.
[106] Retana, p. 193.
[107] The office of the governor-general at Malacañan, Manila, has one
painting by Luna that, if he had never painted anything else, would be
enough to insure his fame.
Juan Luna was also a sturdy patriot. In 1897 he was arrested in Manila
for conspiring in behalf of his country’s independence and by a narrow
chance missed the firing-squad. After six months close imprisonment he
was released and escaped from the country but returned and was present
when the Spanish domination came to an end. (Foreman, p. 394.) His
career was picturesque. He had been born in as poor a home as any in
the Philippines and had begun life as a sailor. The city of Barcelona
purchased and still has one of his paintings that had been awarded a
prize at the Madrid Salon.
[108] Mr. Derbyshire says it was thrown to the dogs, but this must be a
figure of speech. It seems to have been exposed until buried in
unconsecrated ground.
[109] Craig, p. 154; Retana, p. 195.
[110] Craig, p. 170.
[111] Rizal’s own account, “The Turkey That Caused the Calamba Land
Trouble.”
[112] Craig, p. 164.
[113] Retana, pp. 226–227, assumes to defend Weyler on the ground that
he was “upholding judicial authority.” This must be a recrudescence of
Retana’s press-agent days.
[114] “La Solidaridad” was started by Graciano Lopez Jaena at
Barcelona. Del Pilar took charge of it in October, 1887, and moved it
to Madrid to be nearer the centers of action. Compare Blair and
Robertson, Vol. LII, p. 176.
[115] Retana, p. 199; Blair and Robertson, Vol. LII, p. 178.
[116] “The Reign of Greed” (“El Filibusterismo”), pp. 86–87;
Derbyshire’s translation.
[117] Between “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo” is a vast
difference. We speak of novels. In “Noli Me Tangere” all is fresh,
ingenuous, impetuous; it is a novel that impresses one in such a way
that it is never forgotten; it is a work of feeling. “El
Filibusterismo” is a work of deep thought, and in literature it must be
remembered that sentiment is preferred to thought. “Noli Me Tangere” is
a picture of the whole country, rich in color and in fantasy, entwined
with the dreams of a delicate poetry. “El Filibusterismo” came to be a
series of philosophical-political treatises with a novelistic trend;
every speech that appears in the work ends in a patriotic dissertation.
“Noli Me Tangere” is the unbosoming of an enlightened poet,
passionately patriotic, artistically revolutionary. “El Filibusterismo”
is a series of meditations; it lacks the admixture of humor, of
semi-sweet irony that produces such an effect in the first book. It
despises the attacks of the religious fanatics, threatens with
Voltairian sharpness. The ambient air of the tropics is not felt,
charged full of melancholy, which is to be breathed in “Noli Me
Tangere.” Rizal wrote his first novel having constantly before his
dreamy fantasy the vision of his country as it was. In the second he
wrote thinking of the redemption of his race, elevating the philosopher
above the artist. “Noli Me Tangere” is a novel; “El Filibusterismo” is
a tract on the national anarchy. Retana, p. 201.
[118] It was published in Ghent. The title-page bears this imprint:
“Gent: Boekdrukkerij F. Meyer-Van Loo, Vlaanderstraat, 67. 1891.” Rizal
was now able to defray from his own means the cost of publication. The
Madrid newspaper, “El Nuevo Régimen,” published in October, 1891,
“extensive extracts” from the novel; so did “La Publicidad” of
Barcelona. Not a line of it was printed in the Philippines until 1900.
Four years later it was translated into Tagalog.
[119] “Filipinas dentro de Cien Años,” in “La Solidaridad,” 1889–90.
We note that when Rizal discusses the possibility of future
independence for his people he sets it as a century hence. We need not
take him literally, nor on the other hand need we say his title was
merely hypocritical and he was insidiously inciting his people to think
of immediate independence; we shall be fairer to survey his writings as
a whole, probably reaching the conclusion that the independence of his
people was constantly in his mind, but sober reason warned him to
restrain his and their youthful impatience on that subject. Blair and
Robertson, “The Philippine Islands,” Vol. LII, pp. 202–203.
[120] In his pretty little romance, “Mariang Makiling,” he utters this
protest against forced military service in the Philippines and
indicates the effect it had on the people:
“Meanwhile, the time of the Spanish army’s conscription came. God
knows the young men dreaded it, and how their mothers hated it!
Youth, home, family, feelings, and sometimes honor itself,
good-bye! Seven or eight years of such soldier life was
brutalizing. The military despotism relied upon the lash. Such a
prospect seemed to the youth a long night that would sap away the
fairest portion of his life. In it would be horrible nightmares,
and from it he would awake old, useless, corrupted, bloody, and
cruel. So dreaded was the draft that some have been known to cut
off their two fingers in order to exempt themselves from military
service. Others pulled out their front teeth (in the days when the
cartridge had to be bitten off). Still others fled to the mountains
and became bandits. Not a few even committed suicide.”—Dr. Craig’s
translation.
[121] Retana, pp. 181–182.
[122] “French Composition Exercises,” by José Rizal, B.A., Ph.M.,
L.C.M. (Madrid), Postgraduate student in Paris, Leipzig, Heidelberg,
Berlin and London. Our copy is published by the Philippine Education
Company, Manila, 1912.
[123] Craig, “Rizal as a French Student,” printed as an Appendix to the
“French Composition Exercises.”
[124] “La Indolencia de los Filipinos,” translated by Dr. Craig,
Manila, 1913.
[125] Pages 11–12.
[126] Page 13.
[127] Page 15.
[128] Page 17.
[129] Page 18.
[130] Page 22.
[131] Page 23.
[132] Page 26.
[133] Page 26.
[134] Page 27.
[135] Page 30.
[136] Page 37.
[137] Page 38.
[138] “The Outlook for the Philippines,” Chap. X.
[139] Flat-horned buffalo, the beast of burden in the Philippines.
[140] Page 49.
[141] Page 56.
[142] These and the succeeding particulars are communicated or verified
by friends that knew him in Madrid at this time, had been in the
university with him or observed him later.
[143] In a letter to the present authors.
[144] See Appendix A.
[145] Mr. Canon; also Craig.
[146] The letter will be found in a later chapter.
[147] Craig, p. 165. On Retana’s return from the Philippines he became
connected with “La Politica de España en Filipinas,” an organ of
reaction and most furiously opposed by “La Solidaridad.” From 1895 to
1898 he was the chief editor of this virulent sheet, which was
undoubtedly maintained by the friars as their mouthpiece in the
capital. Compare Blair and Robertson, Vol. LII, p. 164.
[148] Retana, p. 195.
[149] For a collection of astounding facts bearing upon the disregard
of this part of the oath reference may be had to Foreman, “The
Philippine Islands,” pp. 202–204.
[150] Chap. IV and X.
[151] As will appear later, this was either prevision or a knowledge of
governor-generals so accurate it is almost phenomenal.
[152] Chap. XI.
[153] Chap. XVIII.
[154] Convento: priest’s house.
[155] Chap. XXX.
[156] Chap. XXVII.
[157] Chap. XXXIII–XXXV.
[158] Chap. XXXIX.
[159] Retana, pp. 194–195. He dwells with sympathy upon Rizal’s
unselfish devotion to his family.
[160] Craig, pp. 172–174; Retana, pp. 231–233.
[161] Craig, p. 182; Retana, p. 235.
[162] They bear the same date, June 20, 1892. Retana, p. 243.
[163] Retana prints the Spanish original at p. 243.
[164] Dr. Craig’s translation, pp. 176–179.
[165] Craig, p. 179.
[166] Craig, p. 182.
[167] The Economic Society of Friends of the Country was established by
Governor-General Basco in 1780. It was about as radical, revolutionary,
and dangerous as Despujol himself.
[168] It appears that the first members he enrolled were friends of his
in the masonic lodge, which probably gave rise to the story that La
Liga Filipina was a masonic organization. Rizal had been warmly
welcomed by his brother masons at Manila and was pleasantly astonished
to find the lodge so large and flourishing.
The Constitution of the Liga declared these to be its Ends:
1. To unite the whole archipelago into one compact, vigorous, and
homogeneous body.
2. Mutual protection in every want and necessity.
3. Defense against all violence and injustice.
4. Encouragement of industry, agriculture, and commerce.
5. The study and application of reforms.
The motto was “Unus instar omnium.” (One like all.)
[169] The idea of such a society originated with José Maria Basa, one
of the remarkable Filipinos then refugees in Hong-Kong. He mentioned it
to Rizal and suggested a constitution, which Rizal, with his trained
intellect, quickly formulated.
[170] Retana, pp. 252–253, says it had spread into the provinces before
the Spanish Government was well aware of what was going on.
[171] “Rizal’s Own Story,” p. 53.
[172] Craig, p. 190; Derbyshire, p. xxxvii. Mr. Derbyshire calls the
decree of banishment “a marvel of sophistry.” Retana’s version, pp.
254–255, justifies this verdict.
[173] Petates: bed-mats. Mattresses were little used in the
Philippines.
[174] Once more, justice à la espagnole in the Philippines. Dr. Craig
has the full story.
[175] Practicante: practitioner in surgery and medicine.
[176] Craig, p. 196.
[177] Craig, p. 198.
[178] Dr. Craig, p. 223, has photographic reproductions of some of
these.
[179] “Another famous and well-known water supply is that of Dapitan,
Mindanao, designed and constructed by Dr. José Rizal during his
banishment in that municipality by the Spanish authorities.... This
supply comes from a little mountain stream across the river from
Dapitan and follows the contour of the country for the whole distance.
When one considers that Dr. Rizal had no explosives with which to blast
the hard rocks, and no resources save his own ingenuity, one cannot
help but honor a man that against adverse conditions had the courage
and tenacity to construct this aqueduct, which had for its bottom the
fluted tiles from the houseroofs and was covered with concrete made
from lime burned from sea coral. The length of this aqueduct is several
kilometers, and it winds in and out among the rocks and is carried
across gullies in bamboo pipes upheld by rock or brick piers to the
distributing reservoir.”—Quarterly Bulletin, Department of Public
Works, October, 1912.
[180] Mr. Soliven, “Rizal as a Scientist.”
In about three years he sent to the museum at Dresden nine mammals,
thirteen birds, forty-five reptiles, nine fishes, 240 insects,
sixty-eight crustaceans, and other invertebrates.
[181] Craig, pp. 148–149.
[182] Printed by Retana, pp. 328–329.
[183] See Appendix A.
[184] He refers to the long contest between the orders and the part of
the clergy (largely native) that was outside of the orders, called “the
secular clergy.” What he means is to end the power of the orders to
fill the parish appointments. In this conversation, Carnicero seems to
be leading him to speak of the friars—the most perilous of topics.
[185] Retana, p. 327.
[186] Dr. Craig’s translation, first printed with his “Rizal’s Own
Story.”
[187] Rizal to his mother.
[188] Retana, p. 338.
[189] Craig, p. 103.
[190] Retana, p. 338.
[191] Craig, p. 272.
[192] Craig, p. 214; Retana, pp. 339–340.
[193] Craig, p. 215; Derbyshire, p. xlvii.
[194] Retana, p. 248, hails him as “Grand figure!”
[195] Fernández, p. 241.
[196] Fernández, p. 240.
[197] Retana, p. 342.
[198] Craig, p. 224; also, Retana, p. 342.
[199] Dr. Blumentritt had been so resentful of the injustice of which
Rizal was a victim that he had endeavored to have the German Government
protest against Rizal’s deportation. Retana, p. 316.
[200] Retana prints this at p. 349.
[201] Retana, pp. 347–348.
[202] Derbyshire, p. xii.
[203] Fernández, p. 244.
“The ordinary prisons were more than full, and about 600 suspects were
confined in the dungeons of Fort Santiago at the mouth of the Pasig
river, where a frightful tragedy occurred. The dungeons were
overcrowded ... the Spanish sergeant on duty threw his rug over the
only light and ventilating shaft and in a couple of days carts were
seen by many citizens carrying away the dead, calculated to number
seventy. Provincial governors and parish priests seemed to regard it as
a duty to supply the capital with batches of ‘suspects’ from their
localities. In Vigan, where nothing had occurred, many of the heads of
the best families and moneyed men were arrested and brought to Manila.
They were bound hand and foot and carried like packages of merchandise
in the hold. I happened to be on the quay when the steamer discharged
her living freight with chains and hooks to haul up and swing out the
bodies like bales of hemp.... I was informed by my friend the Secretary
of the Military Court that 4,377 individuals were awaiting trial by
court martial.”—John Foreman, “The Philippine Islands,” pp. 375, 377.
In September alone thirty-seven men were shot after summary trials.
Compare Blair and Robertson, Vol. LII, p. 191.
[204] Foreman, p. 376.
[205] Craig, pp. 229–230; Blair and Robertson, Vol. LII, p. 190.
[206] Foreman, p. 376.
[207] Retana, p. 351. “No! Prófugo? No! Me declararían cómplice del
levantamiento!”
[208] Craig, p. 231; Derbyshire, p. xliii.
[209] His old friend, Dr. Antonio Maria Regidor of London, was the
author of this plan. It went so far that all the papers were drawn up
and signed. Retana prints them at pp. 352–353.
[210] Craig, p. 234.
[211] Dr. Craig’s translation.
[212] Craig, p. 237.
[213] The other, in rime, excellently done by Mr. Derbyshire, will be
found in the Appendix. The blank verse translation printed above was
once heard in the American House of Representatives and gave rise to a
memorable scene. A debate was on concerning Philippine independence. In
a speech of great power and eloquence, Representative Cooper, of
Wisconsin, supported the plea of the Filipinos. In the course of his
argument he told how he had indifferently picked up at a book-stall a
book containing the farewell poem of José Rizal, of whom he knew next
to nothing; how he had read it and been so seized with its beauty that
he had bought the book and committed the poem to memory. Then he
recited it. After the first few lines a profound silence fell upon the
chamber, unbroken to the end. As Mr. Cooper uttered the last great line
in this wonderful composition, there was an exhibition of emotion
unwonted in that place. One of the oldest and most famous
representatives, little given to sentiment, afterward admitted that the
poem and Mr. Cooper’s speech had converted him to the Philippine cause.
He said that a race capable of producing a man of such character and
attainments was a race entitled to and capable of its freedom.
[214] Retana, p. 417. The newspaper represented was the “Herald” of
Madrid.
[215] His letters show this.
[216] Craig, p. 244.
Mr. Derbyshire (p. xlvi) does not indorse this opinion, and Retana (p.
287) recounts a discussion between Rizal and a Jesuit priest in which
Rizal seemed to repudiate the doctrine of the eucharist. But Dr. Craig
came to the conclusion that in faith Rizal never wavered from the
foundation principles of the church. Whosoever reads now attentively
the passages in his writings that seem to express his convictions on
this subject can hardly fail to be impressed with the noble and exalted
piety that breathes through them and is not likely to believe that this
could be otherwise than sincere.
[217] Craig, p. 244.
[218] This would be insisted upon first of all.
[219] The obvious lies that have been piled high over all these matters
must fill every investigator with disgust. The friars promptly issued
(from Barcelona) what purported to be a circumstantial account of
Rizal’s last hours. Almost every statement in it susceptible of any
examination has been shown to be false, or impossible. The liars have
even managed to make doubtful the ecclesiastical marriage with
Josephine. They said that the record of it was in Manila Cathedral, but
it is not and never has been discovered. They said that Rizal signed in
a book of devotions his full acceptance of the articles of faith and
gave it to his sister. His sister afterward could not recall having
seen it and it was never found. They said that he was fully reconciled
to the church, but his burial was not in accordance with the church’s
rites.
One fact about the matter and only one seems reasonably certain. If
Rizal had signed any document that could have been of the slightest use
to the governing Interests it would have been exhibited and used at
that time so perilous to Spain. A great rebellion was on; the immediate
impulse to it was resentment against the ill treatment of Rizal and the
inspiration of freedom. Anything in the nature of a retraction from him
would have been worth to the Spanish cause more than the strength of
many brigades. The mysterious document he was alleged to have signed
has mysteriously disappeared. The friars said they took it to the
Ateneo, and thence sent it by messenger to the archbishop, to be
deposited in the archiepiscopal records. There all trace of it was
lost—if there ever was such a paper. It was for Spain, if these
accounts have any truth, the most valuable thing in all the
Philippines, and the cunning persons that had (again by these accounts)
produced a jewel of such price immediately allowed it to slip into the
gutter. Not unless they had all gone mad.
The whole subject, which might well be considered as extraneous to the
real significance of Rizal’s life and death, was revived in 1920 by the
appearance in Barcelona of a brochure by Gonzalo M. Piñana entitled
“Murió el Doctor Rizal Cristianamente?” (Did Doctor Rizal Die a
Christian?), with the subtitle of “Reconstruction of the Last Hours of
his Life: a Historical Study.” Unfortunately, the book renewed a futile
discussion without adding a line to the available information about it.
Mr. Piñana gathered the newspaper reports current at the time of
Rizal’s death, used the statements of the friars already discredited,
and reprinted the assertions that for twenty-four years had been made
on one side and repudiated on the other. He satisfied himself that
Rizal died a Christian, but everybody else had long before been
satisfied of that fact. But while he added nothing to the store of
human wisdom on these subjects, Mr. Piñana reminds us of an incident
that is well worth preserving. Among the persons moved by the tragedy
to sympathy with the condemned man was the attorney-general of the
Philippines, Señor Castaño, who said to him:
“Rizal, you love passionately your mother and your country. Both are
Catholic. Do you not think it will be very hard for you to die outside
of their chosen religion?” To which Rizal replied:
“Mr. Attorney-General, you may be sure that I have no intention of
closing the gates of eternity upon myself.” Piñana, p. 79.
[220] Craig, p. 240.
[221] Retana, p. 428.
[222] Clifford, in “Blackwood’s Magazine.”
[223] Retana, p. 429.
[224] Retana, p. 431; Craig, p. 248. The details of the last scene in
Retana’s account followed here were supplied to him by Dr. Saura, who
said he followed the death-march and tried to hear all that was said.
[225] Foreman, “The Philippine Islands.” p. 386.
[226] Retana, pp. 430–432; Craig, pp. 247–250; Derbyshire, pp.
xlvii–xlix; Clifford in “Blackwood’s Magazine”; Mr. Tavera’s
corrections; Piñana; Foreman, Chap. XXII.
[227] Craig, p. 251.
[228] Craig, p. 259.
[229] He rose from the ranks to the grade of brigadier-general.
[230] General Monet (Spanish) operated in the north against the rebels
with Spanish and native auxiliary forces. He attacked the armed mobs in
Zambales province, where encounters of minor importance took place
almost daily, with no decisive victory for either party. He showed no
mercy and took no prisoners; his troops shot down or bayoneted rebels,
non-combatants, women and children indiscriminately. Tillage was
carried on at the risk of one’s life, for men found going out to their
lands were seized as spies and treated with the utmost severity as
possible sympathizers with the rebels. He carried this war of
extermination up to Ilocos, where, little by little, his forces
deserted him. His auxiliaries went over to the rebels in groups. Even a
few Spaniards passed to the other side, and, after a protracted
struggle which brought no advantage to the government, he left
garrisons in several places and returned to Manila.—Foreman, p. 390.
[231] Treaty of Biacnabato.
[232] Fernández, p. 251.
“That Spanish circles in Manila as well as the Filipinos were in
expectation, late in 1897, and early in 1898, of the announcement of
some comprehensive scheme of Philippine reform is apparent from the
press of that time.”—Blair and Robertson, Vol. LII, pp. 200–201.
[233] For a full account of these difficulties, see “The Outlook for
the Philippines,” pp. 77–98.
[234] Barrows, “History of the Philippines,” p. 308.
[235] Incredible as it may seem, when the first anniversary of his
death came, December 30, 1897, the implacable Interests made it an
occasion of public holiday and rejoicing.
[236] With other evidences of gratitude the legislature sought to
bestow a pension on Rizal’s mother. The character of this extraordinary
woman was revealed again in her response. She declined the pension on
the ground that it would lower the standard of patriotism observed in
her family. The Rizals, she said, did not serve Filipinas for money.
José Rizal’s father died soon after José’s murder. His mother lived to
see the Spanish flag pulled down and the power of the friars
annihilated. Paciano Rizal was living in 1923, a prosperous farmer.
Mrs. José Rizal joined the insurgent army after her husband’s death and
for a short time appeared with rifle in hand in the trenches. Soon
afterward she retired to a hospital, where she served for a time as a
nurse. She then made her way to Manila, where she had a heated
interview with Governor-General de Rivera.—(Foreman, p. 388.)
“What did you go to Imus for?” inquired the general.
“What did you go there for?” rejoined Josephine.
“To fight,” said the general.
“So did I,” said Josephine.
“Will you leave Manila?” asked the general.
“Why should I?” asked Josephine.
“The friars will not leave you alone if you stay there, and they will
bring false evidence against you. I have no power to overrule theirs.”
“Then what is the use of being governor-general?”
Because of her adopted father’s nationality, she was now under American
protection; otherwise she would have experienced the vengeful feeling
that still possessed the reigning powers. She made her way to
Hong-Kong, where, after a time, she remarried and so passed from
history.
[237] In the life of Rizal the note of physical love is scarcely
perceived. Don Isabelo de los Reyes has written:
“I have said that he sacrificed even his natural passions for his
country, because if Rizal would have stretched forth his hand for
better favor from the Philippines, he would easily have received it;
and yet he did not marry, undoubtedly so as not to bring misfortune on
his family because of the horrible end which he foresaw, and only ‘in
articulato mortis’ married a foreigner who had been his sweetheart.
Thus he made patent the fact that he did not hate the white race, as
his enemies the priests claimed. They are very much interested in
having it believed that the insurrectionists do not hate them directly,
but the entire white race, which is a calumny, as are so many others
that they are wont to invent to help obtain their ends.”—Retana, p.
338.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 73848 ***