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.