CHAPTER XI

WHAT MANNER OF MAN

More than the persecutions launched against his family disturbed Rizal in the news he was receiving now from Manila. The fire of discontent was rising among the people of the Philippines; the letters of his friends foreshadowed an explosion. Not revolution by peaceful means was at hand but another civil war. He determined to go to Madrid that he might talk with the Filipinos there about these storm-signals and at the same time lodge with the Spanish Government a formal protest against the eviction of the family from its Calamba property.

At Madrid he found the situation much changed in the five years of his absence. In the Filipino colony the feeling had gained that from such a Government nothing was to be won by appeals and agitation. For an illustration men pointed to Cuba. Petitions, reasonings, arguments, beseechings wrought nothing. Whatever Cuba had gained was tribute to its sword. Against this Rizal still counseled. Even in such a crisis he could not rid his mind of the doctrine of fitness for self-government, and so long as he reasoned more than he allowed himself to feel, he could not compromise with his overmastering horror of war.

In this, again, he had outstripped the current thought of his age. A world without war was then the dream of a few enthusiasts, looking to another generation or to some mystic transformation in the chemistry of human blood; what were called practical men went on devising new torpedoes and more powerful explosives for the next conflict. In his own way, different from theirs, he was himself as truly a practical man as ever lived, and a warless humanity was no dream to him; he thought he could see it close at hand. He thought he could see his fellow-men of all lands surrendering the lunacy of combat for a rational settlement of international troubles by agreement and arbitration. Out of the reflexes of his own thought and spirit he was instructed that the hour for this transformation had come.

Up to that time, certainly, the lessons of history, his favorite study, were against him. There can be no doubt that a condition of oppression or general injustice is in essence a condition of violence, and so far in the human story half-emancipated man has found no way to end one condition of violence except by means of another. “It will have blood, they say, blood will have blood,” might have been written across the gates of every house of tyranny. The hope that the frightful wrongs laid upon the Filipinos could be an exception to this primordial rule was alluring to a soul like Rizal’s. We can see now that in the existing stage of civilization it was no better founded than the other deceptive notion that the sufferings of the common people of France under the Ancient Régime could have had any result but retribution in kind. As a matter of strict fact, the Reign of Terror was established years before Dr. Guillotin thought of his device of “a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history.” It was in reality assured by the fathers of many innocent and well meaning ladies and gentlemen whose heads it rolled into the Seine—a painful thought, but historically indisputable. The fierce philosophy of these records Rizal could not assimilate; the poet in him revolted at the ugliness of hatred; he had too genuine a love of his own kind to tolerate cruelty. Whether in the mass or toward individuals he could not endure it. These seem to constitute the only set of facts his mind was unable to absorb. He could in four weeks master a language and could not in a lifetime well comprehend the caveman’s logic of blows.

This amiable strabismus half blinded him to what was really impending in his own country. The truth was that the System was slowly forcing a revolt there; not intentionally, but after the manner of all drunken power. To lay bare the iniquities of that System was to send against it the torch and ax. Every page of “Noli Me Tangere” was in effect a call to battle. He never suspected this, but fact it was nevertheless. To imagine, as he at one time imagined, that intrenched greed would without a struggle surrender its privileges and lay by the cracking of its whips was to imagine that which never was nor shall be. The reversion to primitive standards was inaugurated, not by Filipino revolutionists, but by the System itself, which, denying justice, left to the harassed multitudes nothing but revolution.

At this crux of his story, when he appeared at Madrid as the champion of an impossible peace, and the eyes and hearts of all his countrymen were turning to him, the time may be good to describe the man that had already wielded so tremendous a power.

He was then in his thirty-first year. The first impression one had of him was of wholesome vigor and physical well-being. He was of rather slender build, but all of muscle and sinew compact, for he never remitted his exercises. In height, he was five feet, four inches; coming of what seems to Occidental eyes an undersized people. From long hours at his desk he had contracted a slight stoop. His handsome face retained its fine boyish oval, but rugged character and unshakable firmness were now stamped upon it, and an expression of melancholy. His eyes were still remarked for their brightness. His hands were small and shapely, his feet noticeably small. [142]

His voice was low in pitch, of a noble tonality, and so strangely vibrant that one hearing it at its best never forgot it. One of his rules was never to raise it; he spoke always with an identical restraint. With such a voice and with his flow of apt and picturesque language he was equipped for public speaking, in which he had made on several occasions a rather marked success; yet he always thought lightly of the art of oratory and refused to pursue it.

Whether among his friends or in his writings he had ordinarily little to say about himself, and there is but one recorded instance when he seemed to give way to the bitter recollections that must at times have assailed him. On this occasion he said to a friend in London with whom he was walking:

“I have traveled around the world. I have studied the important nations by personal and direct observation. I have noted well all the races that have contributed to human progress. I speak all their languages and others. And yet,” he added with a melancholy smile, “I am to the friars merely a vulgar half-breed.”

At Madrid, one of his intimates from the Islands was Teodoro Sandiko, later to be a leader among his people and an honored member of the Philippine Senate. In a letter recalling their association, Senator Sandiko once wrote: [143]

Rizal was fond of physical exercise and so was I. We practised fencing together and soon became good and close friends.

He was simple in his manners, but profound in his studies and researches, analytical in his mental processes, reflective rather than sentimental. He was extremely methodical and industrious; I never saw him idle. He had great confidence in himself, was firm in his faith, resourceful in the solving of a difficult situation, swift and sure in his decisions. His habit was to answer without hesitation and succinctly any question that might be put to him; he had never to hunt for an idea or a word. He was the most loyal of friends; anything he possessed was at his friend’s disposal. He was courteous, affectionate, affable, sincere, but rather serious. His mental state may be judged from the mass of material he contributed to “La Solidaridad,” so varied, so forceful and so carefully prepared.

Wherever he went, he seemed without effort to make friends of all men that came near him. Set down in a steamer full of strangers, he would be noted at once by every passenger and before dinner was served would be on good terms with most of the persons on board, crew included. Yet, strange to say, he seldom smiled, usually seemed distrait in the midst of others’ mirth, and was sometimes lost in gloomy musing, when he seemed all unaware of his surroundings. In the opinion of his friends, he had almost no self-consciousness; certainly, all his life he hated affectations and never lost a chance to scorch them with his terrible sarcasm; for this man of the world, ordinarily so suave and courteous that he won good will even among his enemies, had certain reserve funds of censuring speech he could make as bitter as gall. Whether he sat, walked, stood, talked, or listened he was always natural, always composed, and always the sure master of himself. When he went through the United States he noticed that the men there conversed without gesticulating, contrary to the practice of the Spaniards and most Europeans. On reflection he deemed the practice to lend strength to utterance and thereafter made it a rule to keep his hands still while he talked.

The image of a man that seldom smiled and yet so easily won his fellows to like him seems out of the drawing of nature and yet in this case is essentially true. There was in Rizal’s face something almost irresistibly winning. Good will looked out of it and warm human sympathy and a kind of downright sincerity that found a way to the notice of even the dullest. It seemed to one studying him attentively that on the original lines of a being all love, gentleness, and meditation had been stamped later a great melancholy and a great and high resolve. Lowly men seemed to understand instinctively something in him they could never have formulated nor described, something friendly and good; and men of learning turned with a similar impulse to a mind that showed itself so wealthy and still so unpretending.

He loved music, was a good judge of it, and composed it readily and well. He loved flowers as all other things beautiful—of course, being an artist born and the instinct ineradicable in him! That charming poem of his, “The Flowers of Heidelberg” [144] was written in the intervals between his pursuits of the most advanced discoveries and driest facts in ophthalmology, surgery, ethnology, entomology, anthropology, and the penning of some of the fiercest passages of condensed wrath to be found in any language. It is likely that he saw nothing grotesque in these abrupt transitions; perfectly sincere men have little time for such nice questionings. If we regard the making of poetry as the serious business of his soul, which it was, his chief intellectual relaxation was chess, of which, by the time of his second visit to Madrid, he had become a notable player. [145]

He had as little vanity as any man conscious of his powers could reasonably have. Yet he was always careful of his appearance and took pains to dress well, after the most modest taste. Even when he was poverty-stricken in Berlin and living on a daily bowl of coffee and piece of bread, he would allow himself no laxity in his attire.

Once he wrote of some pupils of his that he was teaching them to behave like men. [146] It was a point of weight with him. His conception of a man was one that had at all times himself in full command. This virtue he had practised assiduously from those old days at the Ateneo when first he perceived its splendors; and now he was so truly captain of his own soul that, as we have seen, he could endure privations, subdue appetites, and urge himself along his road by the sheer force of his will. He was the greater part of his life desperately poor; yet if he had been willing to practise his profession for gain a great fortune was within his grasp. In whatsoever conditions he found himself he still tried to adhere to that plan he had adopted at the Ateneo of apportioning his day according to a schedule. He was more careful of his time than a miser of his gold; he would waste no hour. To his friends he admitted that when he sat silent in company and seemed to be moody he was composing his next article for “La Solidaridad” or a new

## chapter in one of his books. He was the least superstitious of men, but

for years he had a presentiment that he would die by shooting. Once crossing Bagumbayan Field he pointed to the place of execution and said to a companion, “On that spot I shall some day be put to death by a firing-squad.” As a final light upon a singular character, it is to be noted that he was not oppressed by this foreboding. It was accompanied in his mind, as nearly as one can discern, with a conviction that the cause for which he stood must have its victims, and to this extent and no farther showed in him the fatalism supposed to be a distinctive trait of the Malay.

He was ordinarily so calm, so self-contained, so much the example of the reasoning man and the like, that it seems highly incongruous to think of him as a duelist; yet twice he challenged to mortal combat. It appears that under his coolly borne exterior there was fire, and even his beautiful faith in the supremacy of reason had not eradicated all the Old Adam from his blood. He seems never to have thought that the violence he contemplated was nothing but a minute specimen of the war-making he denounced, nor that in sending challenges he reverted from his most cherished doctrines. Perhaps if the inconsistency had been pointed out to him then it would not have disturbed him, and certainly it is a hobgoblin that need not disturb us now. If the queer bundle of nerves that is called man never presented a greater irrelevancy, admiration for him need molt no feather. Both of the quarrels, if so they might be called, that brought out the fighting instinct in the gentle artist-student resulted from incidents in Madrid when he returned there in 1890. W. E. Retana, who had been press-agent in Manila for the friars, was now a Madrid journalist and printed in his newspaper a vicious and baseless attack upon Rizal wherein he sought, doubtless, to revenge the friars on the author of “Noli Me Tangere.” Without delay Rizal sent him a challenge. Mr. Retana seems to have had no appetite to go afield; he published a retraction and apology and the quarrel ended. [147] Rather oddly, Retana, who had been in Manila the bitter foe of the Filipino cause and of all its champions (though possibly on a commercial basis), became, after this incident, first the friend and then the biographer of Rizal.

The other altercation was with Antonio Luna, [148] afterward a famous commander in the army of the Philippine Republic. About a woman of Rizal’s acquaintance Luna made an unworthy remark, and Rizal sent him a challenge. Having possibly regained sobriety meanwhile, Luna withdrew the remark and apologized for it, whereupon the quarrel was made up without mortal arbitrament. In his chivalrous and unsullied attitude toward women Rizal was true to the finest traditions of his race. Among the faults of the Filipinos, lechery is assuredly not included. Except the Irish, no other people on earth have a higher conception of chastity and sex morality, nor adhere to it with greater tenacity. Retana wrote that Rizal had “a truly upright moral sense.” It was but an inadequate tribute. He was a champion of righteousness; his religion was like Wendell Phillips’s, “a battle not a dream.” When he wrote, “The good of my country, that is all I pursue,” he was not making platform epigrams but telling what the records confirm.

We have spoken of the purity of his conduct; at least as wonderful is the fact that he left so little trace of a selfish aim. Other men with great work to do have had all of his indifference to wealth; what classifies him as above all these is his far rarer indifference to the nobler ambitions for fame and power that have beset so many others in his position and wrecked so many good causes. He sought no place, looked for no honor, cared for applause as little as finite man could be expected to care, seemed to have no yearning for ease nor for pleasure. The lust of the eyes, and that fatal lure, the joy of warming oneself in the sun of one’s own glory tripped him not. We may admit that the balance to be drawn from these facts is not wholly a human figure; one looks for the faults that have disfigured so many other national heroes and the things that laurel-bearing biographers labor deftly to conceal. There seems to be nothing to conceal about this man. And if the tale of his virtues seems at times overwrought so that we might be relieved to find somewhere that he swore, was easily angered, or chewed tobacco or fought a cabman, we are to remember that as his ideals bore him to unusual heights, so it was an unusual condition that forced him early in life to surrender every purpose but the emancipation of his country. And when we have made all allowances for the power of this ambition that swept him along, the fact will remain and be inevitable in the records that here was a strange figure to walk in upon us in the nineteenth century from the ends of the earth.

There remains to be noted a singular fact about that leadership of his people, forced upon him as we have noted, and not of his designing or plotting. With his prestige and the popularity that was the certain consequence of a success so gratifying to the hurt national pride, he had but to make a gesture to his countrymen and they would have followed him over the smoking ruins of Malacañan or any other place, fighting with bolos if they could come by no rifles. It was a temptation to dramatics on the world stage that few men could have resisted. What reality of stern virtue, worthier of a legendary age than of his own times, was in this man may be gaged from the fact that he not so much resisted the temptation as ignored it. Perhaps to him it was no temptation; at least he may be thought of as living in his inner and real self, where such things weighed nothing. The time demanded from a revolutionary leader a proclamation and loud cheers; he met it with a learned treatise on taxation and how taxation might be improved. Bitter are the penalties that attend a dark skin! But for his complexion the world would class him with its purest and best, with Washington and William the Silent, Phocion and Brutus, Garrison and Wendell Phillips, and the rest of the scanty band that, having great tasks thrust upon them, forgot themselves and their tenements of clay to think only of the Common Good.

As to how José Rizal would stand such a test applied to his career and all of it, take this testimony of Retana, who from antecedent probability at least would invent no extravagance of praise. Even in his youth, said Retana, every injustice, every crime, every wrong, struck home to his sensibilities. He walked with unsmirched garments through a world filled with the reek of a sordid time and the cruelty that man works upon man, trying to make a protest against all oppressions and busy to the end with the troubles of his fellows but not with his own.

To this sketch of his moral self, not less engaging than his physical portraiture, remains to be added one line. Pursued indefatigably by bigotry and prejudice, he was himself of a singular tolerance. The wrongs of his people he resented with towering indignation, and his own he viewed with an astonishing calm. To the gibes and sneers and taunts of his foes he had but the one habitual response:

“To understand all is to forgive all!”

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