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]