CRUELTY
Jose Rizal
It
is an ungrateful task to intervene in a dispute and defend persons who are
neither armless nor paralytic or whose pen is kept down or who do not need
defenders. For that reason we hesitate to answer the article of Bachelor Manuel
de Veras, published in the satirical magazine Manililla of Manila, 1
June 1889.
Moreover,
there are other reasons.
The
character of Manililla (a weekly, illustrated, comical, and humorous)
explains the kind of attack and precludes very serious reply.
The
author, despite his apparent evil intention, his irritation, and his coarse
jokes, does more harm to himself than to the illustrious Professor Ferdinand
Blumentritt, and his attacks are personal rather than arguments and reasons.
But
there are certain considerations that oblige us to defend him or to simulate
a defense, if one who does not feel really attacked can need defense. Mr.
Blumentritt, because of his love for Spain and the Philippines, is now the
target of some childish Spaniards and gross insults and it seems that it is the
duty of the Spaniards and Filipinos to defend him, at least for the purpose of
protesting against those attacks and to prove that we know what is justice and
what is gratitude. Because, if not, the worthy Austrian professor could curse
the hour he began to advocate for the rights of Spain, to learn her language,
to study her history, to wish the welfare of her colonies, devoting to that
nation his time and his life, only to encounter later insults instead of
considerations. Ingrates instead of grateful men!
No;
under pain that Bachelor Manuel de Veras himself might laugh at our candour for
taking seriously hi sallies against our learned Austrian professor, we are
going to make a defense proportional to the attack, for we prefer to be taken
as naive rather than ingrates and ill-bred.
There
is a certain irritation against Blumentritt for dealing with Spanish affairs.
Another writer from Manila already asked him who had given him candles for
the funeral.
While
he defended the rights of Spain against foreign nations, against the Germans
themselves, against Bismarck himself, while in his writings he tried to recover
the glories of Spain and to excuse or explain the defects and faults of the
rulers and the religious corporations, everything was excellent, they praised
him and decorated him, all considered him learned, no one doubted his learning,
no one asked him why he held a candle at the funeral, not even Bismarck despite
his fame of tyrant and absolute. Ah! Happy days were those...! Then, neither
the Indios themselves, who were almost the only one who were censured in his
works (thanks to the description that those who know and then call themselves
their fathers or their brothers made of them) protested or complained
but rather they looked upon him with sympathy for his disinterestedness and his
learning and they excused some of his estimates or prejudices infused by the
books he had studied.
But,
according as the professor studied the matter and came in contact with the
oppressed and slandered race, his estimates were also modified. In order to
judge a case, it was not always good to hear only one side of the Indios, just
as neither were virtues, reason, and justice a monopoly of the Spaniards. Then
this love for Spain and the Philippines moved him to say the truth in order to
put the Mother Country on the alert, to make her understand her interest and
the abyss that was opening at her feet; and hence the ire of the gods!
Ah!
Gil Blas de Santillana!
Why
do not his enemies discuss with him, why do they reply to his arguments and
alleged data with mud and filth?
And
this word is not a figure of speech but it is the content of the article in
which the Bachelor attacks him. He says at the end:
For
Blumentritt is a zero who is looking for a figure to give him courage,
inasmuch as he alone does not have it.
Thus,
his friendship with the other zero is explained.
And
hence with the two, by placing Philippine unity ahead, they may have real
courage.
One
and two zeros.
Then...The
number one hundred.
If
this end of the article will be examined, it will have nothing funny about it,
for it is dirty, above all to those who have traveled through Spain and know
how their number cientos are.
The
author of the article has the modesty not to appropriate this funny joke and he
attributes it to a person of very renounced merit, resident of the
Philippines, etc., etc.
We
are very sorry for the merit, for the Philippines, and for Manililla.
One
can be a person with many epithets and etceteras without being dirty and a
magazine can be funny without being indecent. Besides, there is one thing. When
one picks up rubbish to hurl against some one, there is, to begin with, the
certainty that he himself will get soiled first and one does not know if the
shot will hit the mark.
And
this was what had happened to the Bachelor Manuel de Veras.
With
respect to his criticism that Blumentritt’s bibliography listed as "books
a series of newspaper articles," it proves that he does not know the use
of a bibliography, he has not seen bibliographical catalogs in which are
included not only periodical articles that deal specially with one subject but
even extraneous ones that incidentally deal with the subject, and he believes
that the merit of a work consists in a greater or less number of pages or in
the form of the writings. There are periodical articles that are more valuable
than books, although the author of the article thinks otherwise. Moreover,
Blumentritt, in putting his bibliography periodical articles, so states and
cites, especially those published in Manila in the last years, are worthless.
But a bibliographer ought not to reject them like a critic. One must admire him
and we admire him more than anybody else, because we would never have been
capable of doing what he does, despite all that we owe the Philippines.
Now,
to say this: "That it received a prize at the Exposition! How remarkable!
Real merit, considering the profusion of rewards, consists in not having been
awarded a prize." This does not concern Mr. Blumentritt. Perchance, Mr.
Manuel de Veras had not been awarded a prize, if he has presented something,
but this is not the fault of the Austrian professor. They warded him and as at
that time, it was not yet agreed that a reward means the opposite, it is not
surprising that he had not been able to protest against the distinction with
which they honored him. The fault lies with the Madrid government or Bachelor
Manuel de Veras for not having made it known before.
Let
them settle it there!