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INTRODUCTION

JOS? RIZAL

In that horrible drama, the Philippine revolution, one man of the purest and noblest character stands out pre-eminently--Jos? Rizal--poet, artist, philologue, novelist, above all, patriot; his influence might have changed the whole course of events in the islands, had not a blind and stupid policy brought about the crime of his death.

This man, of almost pure Tagalo race, was born in 1861, at Calamba, in the island of Luzon, on the southern shore of the Laguna de Bay, where he grew up in his father's home, under the tutorage of a wise and learned native priest, Leontio.

The child's fine nature, expanding in the troublous latter days of a long race bondage, was touched early with the fire of genuine patriotism. He was eleven when the tragic consequences of the Cavit? insurrection destroyed any lingering illusions of his people, and stirred in them a spirit that has not yet been allayed.

The rising at Cavit?, like many others in the islands, was a protest against the holding of benefices by friars--a thing forbidden by a decree of the Council of Trent, but authorized in the Philippines, by papal bulls, until such time as there should be a sufficiency of native priests. This time never came. As the friars held the best agricultural lands, and had a voice--and that the most authoritative--in civil affairs, there developed in the rural districts a veritable feudal system, bringing in its train the arrogance and tyranny that like conditions develop. It became impossible for the civil authorities to carry out measures in opposition to the friars. "The Government is an arm, the head is the convent," says the old philosopher of Rizal's story.

The rising at Cavit? miscarried, and vengeance fell. Dr. Joseph Burgos, a saintly old priest, was put to death, and three other native priests with him, while many prominent native families were banished. Never had the better class of Filipinos been so outraged and aroused, and from this time on their purpose was fixed, not to free themselves from Spain, not to secede from the church they loved, but to agitate ceaselessly for reforms which none of them longer believed could be realized without the expulsion of the friars. In the school of this purpose, and with the belief on the part of his father and Leontio that he was destined to use his life and talents in its behalf, Jos? was trained, until he left his home to study in Manila. At the College of the Jesuits he carried off all the honors, with special distinction in literary work. He wrote a number of odes; and a melodrama in verse, the work of his thirteenth year, was successfully played at Manila. But he had to wear his honors as an Indian among white men, and they made life hard for him. He specially aroused the dislike of his Spanish college mates by an ode in which he spoke of his patria. A Tagalo had no native land, they contended--only a country.

At twenty Rizal finished his course at Manila, and a few months later went to Madrid, where he speedily won the degrees of Ph.D. and M.D.; then to Germany--taking here another degree, doing his work in the new language, which he mastered as he went along; to Austria, where he gained great skill as an oculist; to France, Italy, England--absorbing the languages and literature of these countries, doing some fine sculpture by way of diversion. But in all this he was single-minded; he never lost the voice of his call; he felt more and more keenly the contrast between the hard lot of his country and the freedom of these lands, and he bore it ill that no one of them even knew about her, and the cancer eating away her beauty and strength. At the end of this period of study he settled in Berlin, and began his active work for his country.

Four years of the socialism and license of the universities had not distorted Rizal's political vision; he remained, as he had grown up, an opportunist. Not then, nor at any time, did he think his country ready for self-government. He saw as her best present good her continued union to Spain, "through a stable policy based upon justice and community of interests." He asked only for the reforms promised again and again by the ministry, and as often frustrated. To plead for the lifting of the hand of oppression from the necks of his people, he now wrote his first novel, "Noli Me Tangere."

The next year he returned to the Philippines to find himself the idol of the natives and a thorn in the flesh of friars and greedy officials. The reading of his book was proscribed. He stayed long enough to concern himself in a dispute of his townspeople with the Dominicans over titles to lands; then finding his efforts vain and his safety doubtful, he left for Japan. Here he pursued for some time his usual studies; came thence to America, and then crossed to England, where he made researches in the British Museum, and edited in Spanish, "Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas," by Dr. Antonio de Morga, an important work, neglected by the Spaniards, but already edited in English by Dean Stanley.

After publishing this work, in Paris, Rizal returned to Spain, where, in 1890, he began a series of brilliant pleas for the Philippines, in the Solidaridad, a liberal journal published at Barcelona and afterward at Madrid. But he roused little sympathy or interest in Spain, and his articles, repeated in pamphlets in the Philippines, served to make his position more dangerous at home.

Disheartened but steadfast, he retired to Belgium, to write his second novel, "El Filibusterismo." "Noli Me Tangere" is a poet's story of his people's loves, faults, aspirations, and wrongs; "El Filibusterismo" is the work of a student of statecraft, pointing out the way to political justice and the development of national life. Inspired, it would seem, by his own creation of a future for his country, he returned to the Solidaridad, where, in a series of remarkable articles, he forecast the ultimate downfall of Spain in the Philippines and the rise of his people. This was his crime against the Government: for the spirit which in a Spanish boy would not permit a Tagalo to have a patria, in a Spaniard grown could not brook the suggestion of colonial independence, even in the far future.

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