REFLECTIONS OF A FILIPINO

 

Jose Rizal

 

          When I contemplate the present struggle between the religious corporations and the advanced groups of my country, when I read the numerous writings published by this and that group in defense of their ideas and principles, I’m prompted to ask myself at times if I, a son of the country, ought not to take part in the struggle and declare myself in favor of one of the two groups, for I should not be in different to anything concerning my native land. Or, if I’m more prudent and have learned my lesson better, my role should be to remain neutral, to witness and watch the struggle, to see which party wins and immediately take its side in order to gather more easily the fruit of victory.

          My life has been one of continuous doubting and continuos vacillation. Which party should I side?

          Let’s examine closely the matter and afterwards we shall see.

          What are the advantages of being anti-friar?

          Nothing really. The more I analyze the thing the more I find it silly and imprudent. This thing of struggling so that the country may progress… the country will progress if it can and if it cannot, no. Moreover, what do I care if the coming generation would enjoy more or less freedom than I, have better or worse education, if there be justice for all or there be none… The question is that I, my number one, don’t have a bad time; the question is the present. A bird in my hand is worth more than one hundred flying, says the proverb. Charity begins at home, says another. Here I have two proverbs in my favor and there’s not even half a proverb against me. For the present, in fighting the religious orders, one risks being imprisoned or exiled to some island… Well, not so bad. I like travelling to know the islands, a thing that cannot be done better than by going as an exile. Passports are unnecessary and one travels more safely. Go to jail? Bah, everybody goes to jail. In that way, one gets free house, for as it is, there I don’t pay. Deportation and jail are nothing, but if… if number one is finished, if they take advantage of a mutiny and they charge me as its leader. I’m tired by a council of war and they send me to the other life? Hm! It’s a serious matter to be an anti-friar. What do I care if the friars don’t want the education of the country? They must have a reason. I agree with them. Since I was a child, I have had a hard time going to school and a harder time getting out of it… because the teacher at times kept me a prisoner. Let there be a vote on the matter and see how all the children will vote for the friars, asking for the suppression of every kind of teaching… That the friars oppose the teaching of Spanish… and what’s the matter with that? For what do we need Spanish? To know the beautiful stories and theories of liberty, progress, and justice and afterwards get to like them? To understand the laws, know our rights and then find in practice other laws and other things different from them. Of what use is the knowledge of Spanish? We can speak to God in all languages… if it were Latin I say, well. The curate says that God listens first to the prayers in Latin before those in Tagalog. That’s why Masses are in Latin and the curates live in abundance and we the Tagalogs are badly off. But Spanish? To understand the insults and swearing of the civil guards? For this purpose there’s no need to know Spanish. It’s enough to understand the language of the butt of guns and have the body a little sensitive. And of what use is it to us since we are forbidden to reply, because one can be accused of resisting authority and because the very same civil guard tries the accused, a prison sentence is certain. The truth is that I like to travel and see the islands , though tied elbow to elbow. In this matter of not teaching Spanish, I agree with the friars. Now, they may say this and that about the friars, that they have many women, paramours, that they don’t respect married women, widows, or maidens and the like. On this matter I have my private opinion. I say if one can have two, three, and four women, why should he not have them? Women are to blame. Besides there’s something good about the curate. He does not let his paramours die of hunger, as many men do, but he supports them, dresses them well, protects their families, and leaves a good bequest to his daughters or nieces. And if there’s any sin in it, he’ll absolve them at once and without great penance. Frankly speaking, if I were a woman, and I had to prostitute myself, I would do it to curate… for the time being, I’ll be the paramour of a semi-Jesus Christ, or of a successor of God on earth. In this regard, I believe that the enemies of the friars are merely envious. They say that they monopolize all the estates, get all the people’s money. The Chinese do the same. In this world, he who can enrich himself, enriches himself, and I suppose that a friar for the mere fact of being a friar is not less of a man. Why then should not the Chinese and the merchants be persecuted? Moreover, who knows? Perhaps they take away our money to make us poor so that we may quickly get to heaven. Still we have to thank them for their solicitude. They are also accused of selling their scapulars, belts, candies, rosaries, and other things. This is to complaint just for the sake of complaining. Let him buy who wants to buy, he who doesn’t don’t. Every trader sells her merchandise at the price he likes. The Chinese sells his tinapa sometimes two for a centavo, and at other times, three for two centavos. If we tolerate this practice of the Chinese dealer, why should we not tolerate this practice of the curate-trader of scapulars? Is the curate perchance less of a man than the Chinese? I say it is purely I’ll will. Let them shout and say that with his money and power the friar imposes on the government; what does it matter to me? What do I care if this or that one should give the order if after all I’ll have to obey? Because, if the curate doesn’t give the orders, any corporal of the carabineers will do so, and everything would be the same. In the final analysis, I see no reason whatsoever to go against the friar curates.

          Let’s see now if there are advantages in siding with them against the liberal Filipinos.

          The friars say that these are all atheists… that I don’t know I know only one called Mateo, but it doesn’t matter. They say that they will all go to hell… Frankly, though we ought not to judge harshly anyone, the successor of Christ on earth is exempt from this injunction. He should know better than anybody else where we are going after death, and if he doesn’t know, I say that nobody will know it better. The friars exile many of their enemies; of this I can’t or I shouldn’t complain. I had a lawsuit and I won it because it happened that my adversary was an anti-friar and he was exiled when I was almost in despair of winning the case, for I had no more money to bribe the desk officials and to present horses to the judge and the governor. God is most merciful! They charged administratively Captain Juan, who had a very pretty daughter whom he forbade to go to the convent to kiss the curate’s hand. Well done! That’s doubting and holiness of the curate and he truly deserve deportation. Moreover, what’s he going to do with his daughter? Why guard her so carefully if, after all, she’s not going to be a nun? And even if she had to be a nun, don’t certain rumors somewhere around say the nuns of St. Claire and the Franciscan friars understand each other very well? What’s bad about that? Aren’t the nuns the wives of Jesus Christ? Aren’t the friars his successors? Why so many women for him alone? Nothing, nothing, the friars are right in everything and I’m going to side with them against my countrymen. The Filipino liberals are anti-Spaniard. The proof that they are is… that the friars say so. But if the liberals win? If, tired, persecuted, and desperate for so much jailing and exiling, they throw all caution to the wind, they arm themselves as in Spain, behead their enemies, killing them in revenge may also reach me. Here! Here! Let’s consider well if this is possible.

          Is a massacre of the friars possible in the Philippines? Is it possible here a slaughter to that which occurred in Spain thirty years ago as they say? No, a Filipino never attacks one who is unharmed, one who is defenseless. We see it among boys who are fighting. The biggest one does not use all his superior strength but fights the smallest with only one arm; he doesn’t start the attack before the other one is ready. No, the Indiomay be stupid, simple, fanatical, and whatever one may say, but he always retains a certain gentlemanly instinct. He has to be very, very much offended, he has to be in the last stage of despair to engage in assassinations and massacres of a similar kind. But, if they should do the friars what the friars did to the heretics on St. Bartholomew’s day in France? History says that the Catholics took advantage of the night when the heretics were gathered in Paris and beheaded and assassinated them… if the anti-friar Filipinos, fearing that the friars may do to them what they did in France, take advantage of the lesson and go ahead. Holy God! If in this supreme struggle for survival, seeing that their lives, property, and liberty are in danger, they should stake everything and allow themselves to be carried away by excesses, by the terror that present circumstances inspire? Misfortune of misfortunes! What would then become of me if I side now with the friars? The best course is not to decide. So long as the government does not appease the minds of the people, it’s bad to take part in these affairs. It might be desirable to deport, to send to the gallows all the liberal Filipinos to extirpate the seed… but, their sons, their relatives, their friends… the conscience of the whole country? Are there today more anti-friars than before 1872? Every Filipino prisoners or exile opens the eyes of one hundred Filipinos and wins as many for his party. If they could hang all Filipinos and leave only the friars and me to enjoy the country, that would be the best but… then I’ll be the slave of all of them. I’ll have to work for them, which would be worse. What is to be done? What is the government doing? Liberalism is a plant that never dies, said that damned Rizal… Decidedly I’ll remain neutral: Virtue lies in the middle ground.

          Yes, I’ll be neutral. What does it matter to me if vice or virtue should triumph if I shall be among the vanquished? The question is to win, and a sure victory is a victory already won. Wait for the figs to ripen and gather them. See which party is going to win, and when they are already intoning the hymn, I join them and I sing louder than the rest, insult the vanquished, make gestures, rant so that the others may believe in my ardor and the sincerity of my convictions. Here’s true wisdom! That the fools and the Quijotes allow themselves to be killed so that mine may triumph. Their ideal is justice, equality, liberty! My idea is to live in peace and plenty! Which is more beautiful and more useful, freedom of the press, for example, or a stuffed capon? Which are greater, equal rights or some cartridges equally full of gold coins? Equality for equality, I prefer the equality of money which can be piled up and hidden. Let the friars win, let the liberals win, the question is to come to an understanding afterwards with the victors. What do I care about the native land, human dignity, progress, patriotism? All that is worthless if one has no money!

ON TRAVEL

by

LAONG LAAN*

          .. Who has not traveled? Who does not love to travel? Indeed, travelling is the dream of the young when they became conscious of the life around them; it is a book for mature men, at the age when mind is eager to learn; and in fine, it is the last farewell of the old man when he takes his leave of the world to undertake the most mysterious of all voyages.

          Travel is a caprice in childhood, a passion in youth, a necessity in manhood, and an elegy in old age.

          Don’t read to children Robinson Crusoe or Gulliver’s Travels if you don’t wish to be annoyed with queries about those countries whose magic spell pricks their sensitive imagination. Don’t describe to the young the emotions, episodes, and adventures in strange or unknown countries. Keep out of their sight Julius Verne or Mayne Reid, for if you don’t would disturb their sleep and add to their budding desires, already numerous and vehement, another one which will make them regret their subjection or the modesty of their fortune. Unseen wonders have so much charm; the contemplation of nature is so alluring!

          The desire to travel as well as to know is so innate in man that it seems that Providence has put it in each one of us, so that, spurred by it, we may study and admire His works, communicate and fraternize with those who are far from us and united from a single family-the aspiration of all thinkers.

          For this purpose He has made man a cosmopolite. He has created seas so that ships can glide through their drifting billows with the wind to push and drive them on and the stars to guide them even in the darkest night. He has created rivers which ran through different regions. He has opened in the rocks gorges and paths and thrown bridges across them. He has given the Arab the camel for the vast desert and the inhabitants of the polar regions the reindeer and the dog to pull their sleds.

Travel and Human Progress Advancement.

          All the advancement of modern societies is almost all due to travel. In fact, since the remotest antiquity, men have traveled in search of knowledge, as if it were written on the waters of the sea, on the leaves of trees, on the rocks of the roads, on monuments and tombs.

          The Greeks used to go to Egypt in quest of learning from heir priest; they read the papyri and they humbled themselves in the contemplation of those gigantic tombs-somber symbols of the national idea, - they sought inspiration in their funeral grandeur, as the scholars of Europe today study their hieroglyphics, and from there returned philosophers like Pythagoras, historians like Herodotus, lawmakers like Lycurgus and Solon, and poets like Orpheus and Homer. And religion, civilization, science, law, and customs then came from Egypt, only when they reached the smiling shores of Aeolis,* they shed their mystic garments to don the simple and charming costume of the daughters of Greece.

          Later, from the furrow made by a plow a people sprang up-virile, enterprising, great, proud, and sublime. From their Capitol, casting their eyes around, their ambition was aroused by the world, worthy spoils of boundless greed. They sent out their eagles and the legions, and they returned with all nations yoked to their carts. Greece, a molecule absorbed by that victorious mass, did with Rome what Egypt did with her: She taught her children, adorned her squares and streets with the works of art of her artists; and her learning science, philosophy, fine arts, and literature were transmitted to Rome, losing something of their original grace and beauty though gaining, on the other hand, in grandeur and majesty, reflecting the genius of the arrogant conqueror. Then there occurred in Rome what is now taking place among civilized nations with regard to French influence: Hellenism penetrated everywhere; its poetry and its language became popular and its customs were imitated and its philosophy practiced. Knowledge then, and civilization, which until then had been the patrimony of the East, imitating the natural course of celestial bodies, turned their steps toward the West, but upon reaching the heart of the world, they stopped as if to teach all nations and races. Then Iberia, Gaul, Germania, Britain, and even Africa were sending their sons to the city-the emporium of power, learning, and riches-to see, to admire, and to study in the spacious precinct within its walls whatever the mind of man had conceived up to that time. Going to the source of light in order to illuminate the earth is a spectacle mankind offers at all times. And the tendency towards perfection forms part of the essence of bodies, as the idea of clarity in the concept of day.

          And as nations became old and lost the sap which at one time nourished them, others much younger were born to inherit the precious treasure accumulated by the great human family at the cost of time and sacrifices.

          In vain did the North let loose tempests to bring death to the gay cities of the South; in vain did ignorance and barbarism suck on the tomb of the mistress of the world. If knowledge fled frightened, it was to strengthen herself in the solitude of the cloisters thence to come out again, rigid and severe, guided by Christianity, to enlighten the barbarous hordes who attempted to drown her.

          Then universities were founded. To them traveled from all parts of the world throngs of men doing what the Greeks did in Egypt, the Romans in Greece, and the whole universe in Rome and Byzantium. In all epochs and in all ages in history, travel has been the powerful lever of civilization, because only through travel are the heart and mind of man developed, educated, and enlightened; because only through travel can be seen and studied all the progress of man –geology, geography, politics, ethnology, linguistics, meteorology, history, fauna, flora, statistics, sculpture, architecture, painting, etc-all that form part of human knowledge are laid open to the eyes of the traveler.

          He who only knows the surface of the earth, the topography of a country, only through an examination of maps and plans in his study will have and idea of the subject-I don’t deny-but an idea similar to what he would get about the opera of Meyerbeer or Rossini by reading only the reviews in the newspapers. The brush of a landscape artist like Claude Lorraine, Ruysdael, or

Calame* can reproduce on the canvas a sunray, the coolness of the heavens, the verdure of the

fields, the majesty of the avalanches and mountains, the inhabitants and the animals of the region and even the movement impressed on the grass by the light fluttering of the zephyr, and something more perhaps, but what can never be stolen from nature is that vivid impression that she alone can and knows how to impart, that movement, that life in the music of her birds and trees, that aroma or fragrance peculiar to the place, that inexplicable something that the traveler feels that cannot define and which seems to awaken in his distant memories of happy days, sorrows, and joys gone-by, never to return; and amid the bustle of the world, through one is already forgotten, to love the image of a dear one of his vanished youth, beings that no longer exist, friendships… what more do I know? Melancholy sensations produced by the expression, physiognomy, or air of the country or by a spirit, nymph or god, as the ancient people would say. For example, you could see painted sea beating the shores of Italy one beautiful afternoon when the sun gilds with its most magic rays the little white houses that wreathed the rocks girdled with emeralds and garlands of flowers; the water and the foam that dashes in the hidden bosoms of the rocks, with all the ideal realism of those places, if that expression can be used; but you will miss the fragrance, the life, the movement, the grandeur. You would not embellish those privileged places immortalized by so many poets nor pass in review all that smiling and poetic spectacle as one contemplates it from a boat, caressed by the sea breeze which swells the sails, gliding so gently like the wings of a dream on the brow of a child, like the first word of love on the lips of a virgin, like the chords of a distant orchestra in a silent night. What emotions, what varied sensations, stir the heart at every step when one travels in a foreign and unknown land! There everything is new-customs, languages, faces, buildings,-everything is worthy of observation and reflection.

          Just as it is said that man is multiplied by the number of languages he possesses and speaks, so also is his life prolonged and renewed as he goes travelling in different countries. He lives more, because he sees, feels, enjoys, and studies more than one who ahs seen only the same fields and the same sky and to whom yesterday is the same as today and tomorrow; that is, his whole life, all his past, his present, and perhaps his future, can be reduced into the first dawn and the first sunset.

          What revolution does not take place in the ideas of one who leaves his native land for the first time and travels through different countries. A little bird that has seen only the dry grass of his nest now contemplates panoramas, immense seas, cascades, rivers, mountains, and forests – everything that arouses the enthusiasm of a dreamy imagination. His judgement and ideas are rectified; many prejudices are dispelled; he examines close at hand what before he had judged unseen; he finds new things that suggest to him a new ideas; he admires man in his greatness as he pities him in his wretchedness; the old, blind exclusivism is converted into a universal and fraternal appreciation of the rest of the world and he ceases to be an echo of other people’s opinions in expressing his own, based on direct observation and first-hand information. Friendly intercourse with people, a certain calm and sensible discernment in all his actions; profound reflection, a practical knowledge of all the arts and sciences, if not deep and complete, at least indelible and secure-these are the advantages that an attentive and studious man can derive from travel.

          A book can describe the inhabitants, history, monuments, products, religion, and everything pertaining to a country. Although this knowledge is useful and sufficient, it does not satisfy the discriminating reader who always longs to see things for himself; and sooner or later he forgets it, for it is not fixed in his memory unlike that which he has actually seen, felt, and analyzed which leaves an unforgettable impression.

 

          Modern nations have realized the advantages of this kind of study as shown by their efforts to multiply their media of communication.

          Through this method a travel brings back to his country the good practices that he has seen in other countries and he tries to apply them with the necessary modifications; another, the riches and objects that his own country lacks; this one, religion, laws, and customs; that one, social theories and new reforms, thus introducing social, religious, and political improvements.

          An index of the progress of a country is the good condition of its means of communication and routes of commerce, just as the index of a man’s health is the perfect circulation of the blood through the vessels of the anatomy; because without those routes, there cannot exist relations between the different parts of the country and the other nations cannot be understood; without these bonds, there cannot be either unity or strength; and without strength or unity, man cannot attain perfection or even progress.

          Thus can be understood the eagerness to open roads, tunnels and highways, build bridges, ships, locomotives, and railroads; and as if the earth is too small for so much activity, even the air is being invaded, hitherto the exclusive kingdom of birds and clouds.

          Travel then, emigrate and immigrate, as all begins of the earth are continuous movement from the winged insect that wanders from flower to flower, from plant to plant, and from one meadow to another, even the globe, that little traveler of the infinite spaces, like the swallow in search of a better clime, the seed carried off by the wind, the fish in the unknown abyss of the seas, or man exploring and surveying his vast domains.

          India has already opened her magnificent temples and shows her colossal idols as China has opened the gates of her walls, exhibiting her rare and wonderful products. Africa and the poles open their great deserts and will soon sit at the banquet of progress, being indebted to Livingstone,1 Stanley,2 Nordenskjold3 for their progress and happiness.

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