Second Letter to Fr. Pastells
Dapitan, November 11,1892.
My Most Reverend Father:
Before replying to your valuable letter, I must thank you for Kempis’* book which you kindly sent me. I had already browsed at it in French. I liked it so much that now that I have it and in Spanish, I deem it no small fortune. Some say the Latin original is still better. Gems of thought abound in its pages. Seldom do I come across a sentence that my little understanding does not grasp. Deservedly it has been translated into almost all the languages. There is even translation in Tagalog by Father Vicente Garcia, a canon of the Cathedral**.
I must thank you, too, for the works of Father Chirino and Father Delgado and for the Missionaries’ Letters. From father Sanchez I understand that you are giving them all to me. I had ordered them to be bought, otherwise I would not have dared to ask for them, as I do not believe I deserve so many tokens of kindness, nor do I have anything with which to reciprocate. but since Your Reverence is a noble soul, it will be said that you give solely for the sake of giving, that you give out of the goodness of your heart more than in consideration of the desert or gratitude of the recipient. You know that whatever is done with an ulterior motive turns odious because unavoidably it forges a bond or tie.
I shall not speak of the indulgence with which your Reverence received my remarks in my previous letter. Nor shall I say anything about the admiration with which your letter inspires me in every sense of the word. Your time is too precious for you to listen to the most deserved praises. So I shall limit myself to commenting with due respect on your preservations that have impressed me most.
You exclaim on the first page: "What a pity that so gifted a young man does not lavish his talents on the defense of better causes!" It is quite possible that there are better causes that the one I have espoused, but my cause is good and I am satisfied. Other causes, no doubt, will confer greater advantages, greater fame, greater honors, and greater glory. However, the bamboo that grows on our soil is designed to support nipa huts and not the massive materials for European edifices. I am not sorry for the humbleness of my cause nor for the poor reward it offers. I am only sorry that the talent God gave me is little. Instead of a frail bamboo, I had been a solid molave, I might have rendered better service. But He who ordained thus knows what the future holds in store. He does not make any mistake in His acts. Too well He knows what the tiniest things are for.
As to honors, fame or benefits that I might have reaped, I agree that they are all tempting, especially to a young man of flesh and blood like me with so many frailties like other human being. But since nobody can choose the race or nationality into which he will be born, and since when he is born the privileges and disadvantages inherent in both concepts already exist, I accept my country’s cause, confident that He who made me a Filipino will forgive whatever errors I may commit, considering our difficult situation and the defective education which we receive from the day of our birth.
At any rate, I do not aspire to eternal fame or renown. Neither do I aspire to equal others whose conditions, faculties, and circumstances could be and are, in fact, different from mine. My only wish is to do what is possible, what is within my power, what is most necessary. I have perceived a little light and I believe it is my duty to show it to my countrymen. Others who are more fortunate, like Sarda, etc., may soar to high heaven.
You did well, Your Reverence, in confining yourself in your letter to a philosophico-religious discussion, leaving aside politics for another occasion. I would ask that you hold the latter in abeyance ad kalendas graecas (indefinitely). The subject is a very delicate one, and, as Your Reverence will readily understand, it should not be discussed under the circumstances in which I find myself. Without freedom, it would be provocative to broach a rather independent idea; to broach a slavish one would appear low and fawning. I cannot be a provoker, neither can I be low or truckling. In my opinion, there must be a wide latitude of freedom in order to discuss political questions intelligently and obtain good results.
Commenting on the origin of my works and other writings, you suggest an idea that never occurred to me. You allude to certain resentments and to my hurt dignity. Such feelings I might have experienced with respect to my latest writings, but not with regard to my early ones. . . With all the sincerity and impartiality a man is capable of when examining his past, I have looked back to the tender years of my youth and asked myself if resentment could have ever prompted the pen that wrote the Noli Me Tangere. My memory has answered me in the negative.
If on various occasions I was treated with marked in justice; if my works were ignored with apparent contempt; if in spite of reason my complaints were unheeded; I was still very young, and I forgave more readily than I do now. However deep my wounds at the time, they were finally healed, thanks to the hard core with which nature has endowed me. There were thus no "rankling wounds," no "thorns that had sunk deeper." What there was a clear vision or reality in my country coupled with a vivid recollection of what was going on and a sufficient keenness to judge its etiology. As a result, I was able not only to portray the events, but also the foresee the future. In fact, even now I see what I then called a "novel" evolving with such fidelity that I can say I am witnessing the performance of my work and taking part in it.
As to my German, Protestant, and other "inspirations," I am quite surprised to see so intelligent a man as Your Reverence sharing on this score the confusion of the populace who believes everything it hears without investigating it first. True, I read German books; but that was when I already questioned the veracity and validity of the statements I read. To assume that Germans have inspired me is to betray lack of knowledge of the German people, of their character and their pursuits. One-half of the Noli Me Tangere was written in Madrid, one-fourth in Paris, and the rest in Germany. Witnesses were my countrymen who saw me at work.
When people are confronted with something unusual or startling and have neither patience nor calmness to investigate it, their first impulse is to attribute it to causes that perplex them most. If it is good, it is due to friendly spirits; if it is bad, to foes. In the Middle Ages, everything bad was the work of the devil; everything good, the work of God or His saints. Today, the French see everything in reverse and blame the Germans for it.
In the interest of truth, I will say that in correcting my manuscript in Germany, I retouched it a great deal and condensed it even more. But I also moderated its temper, toned down many expressions, and reduced a number of things to juster proportions as I came to acquire broader perspective of things seen from afar, and my imagination began to lose heat in the midst of the peculiar calm pervading that country. I will go further and affirm that no German had heard of my book before its publication, not even Blumentritt who always praised the Catholic religion in his letters, nor Virchow, nor Jagor, nor Joest, with all of whom I associated in our clubs. For that matter, Schulzer in whose clinic I worked for some time, knew nothing about it. Still, I will not deny that the atmosphere in which I live influenced me, above all on remembering my native land while I was in the midst of that free, full of confidence in its future and master of its destiny.
As to my being a Protestant, Your Reverence would not say such a thing if you only knew what I lost for not declaring myself in agreement with Protestant tenets. had I not always respected religious ideas; had I regarded religion as a science of conveniences or an art of enjoying life; I would now be a rich and free man crowned with honors, instead of being a poor deportee. Rizal, a Protestant! Something in me moves me to laughter, but I am restrained by my respect for all that you say.
Your Reverence should have heard my discussions with a Protestant minister during long winter twilights in those solitary places in Odenwald. There, enjoying complete freedom, we talk calmly and dispassionately about our respective beliefs on the morality of peoples and the influence of their respective creed on them. A healthy respect for the good faith one’s opponent and for the most opposite ideas that inevitably result from diversity of race, divergence of education and age, led us almost always to the conclusion that religions, no matter what they are, should never make men enemies but good brothers. From these conversations which he held almost daily for a period of three months, there was only one conclusion I could draw, if I remember correctly, and that was to have a deep respect for every idea sincerely conceived and practised.
A Catholic priest from a small town by the Rhine came to visit the Protestant minister nearly every month. The priest, an intimate friend of the Protestant minister, gave me examples of the true Christian fraternity. They regarded themselves as two servants of the same Lord. Instead of passing the time fighting between themselves, each of them did his duty and left their Master to judge which of them had done His will.
I am most grateful for your immense charity shown when you said, " If with my blood I could wipe out those premises, etc." True, my situation is not very pleasant. I have been accustomed to live in other climates, to enjoy liberty which is essential to man if he is to be responsible for his acts. It is no less true that I have had to deprive myself of many things, going to the extent of repressing myself occasionally. The loss of a family, the destruction of a future for which I prepared myself in my youth, my seclusion from the social world –– all of these constitute a great punishment. But who has no sorrows, no disappointment, in this life? A little philosophy, a little resignation, will enable me to bear my small cross. What is my misfortune compared with that of many others? Too well I know that there are better trees that afford the ampler shades; but amid the darkness that shrouds my country, I seek no shade, but light.
"And how dark and threatening appear the future!" concludes the paragraph in which you display the goodness of your heart. What can we do? The storm will pass and the worst that can happen is that I shall pass away with it. There you have Kempis’ beautiful passages which say that "there can be no perfect security in this world nor complete peace," and that "man’s life on earth is miserable," etc. Life is so short and the happiest is so full of bitterness that in truth it is not worth while sacrificing one’s convictions for round pieces of metal be they in a form of a cross. Besides, it is all a matter of temperament. Some seek happiness in riches and honors; other, in humbling themselves and bending their knees before their fellow-men; some, in leading others to believe what they themselves do not believe, or in believing what nobody else believe; others content themselves with their opinions of what they are, and with self-mastery, etc. As some doctors would insist, of the nervous system; or, as philosophers would affirm, of egoism.
And who knows if the storm Your Reverence foresees will not only uproot me, a weak plant, but will also blow down secular trees or at least shake them and tear off their branches? Who knows if that storm will purify the air charged as it is with miasma which the stagnation of so many centuries has been exhaling in ominous silence? Who knows? Who can foresee all the consequences of an act? A welcome storm it will be if it will produce the good, the progress, of my country; if with it Mother Spain will be roused to act in favor of the eight million subjects who have reposed their future in her.
Beautiful and accurate are the comparisons you draw concerning the origin and conception of truth by the human mind. I will not dent the possibility that truth may have been polarized while passing through my understanding. Polarization is a process which crystals offer when in their manufacture they are pressed and compressed. Besides, how can I deny such possibility when I am a man burdened with my fallibility?
Our intelligence, I agree, cannot embrace all knowledge or all the truths, particularly when such truth require time and a series of experiments to discover them. Furthermore, I believe that with the exception of mathematical truths, the few that we possess are more or less absolute, more or less imperfect. On social, moral, and political matters, we are so much in the dark ––at least, I am –– that often we confuse the truth with what suits our purposes, if we do not muzzle it to suit our passions.
Nor do I deny that our judgment is subject to deception; our reason, to error. But Your Reverence will also agree that reason alone can correct its errors, reason alone can rise after each fall, such falls being unavoidable in its long pilgrimage on earth. In its worst madness, humanity has not been able to extinguish this lamp which God has given to man. Time and again, its light has flickered, man has lost his way; but such condition vanishes or is overcome. After that the light of reason shines more brightly and steadily. but its rays the mistakes of the past are recognized and the pitfalls of the future are marked.
To be sure, I admit that super-natural or divine light is much more perfect than human reason. Who will doubt the superiority of that Torch when we see here on earth the effects of its tiny spark vouchsafed to humanity? What reason can there be that is not the Creator’s when the very reasoning of that inhabitant of a small world He launched into the space like a snail amidst sea monsters is so astonishing? But who on earth can justly claim that he is the reflector of that Light?
All the religions pretend to possess the truth. Nay, not only religions but every man, even the most ignorant, the most stupid, thinks he is in the right. Seeing so many tenets and opinions; hearing the scorn with which each sectarian treats the beliefs of others; noticing the wonders, miracles, and the testimonies resorted to by every religion to prove its divinity or at least its divine origin; seeing intelligent, honest, and studious men, born in the same climate, in the same society, with the same customs, with the same desire to perfect and save themselves, yet professing in matters of religion divergent views, I am reminded of a simile which I shall take the liberty of reproducing here so that Your Reverence may understand my way of thinking better.
In the study of truth, men are to me like students of drawing who copy a statue while they are seated around it. Some of them are close to it, others are farther away. Some are seated higher, others are at the model’s feet. They see the statue, each from a different angle. The more they try to be faithful in their drawings, the more their drawings will differ from one another. Those who copy the original directly are the thinkers. They are the founders of schools and doctrines. They differ from one another because they start from different points of view. A great number, either because they are far from the model or cannot see very well, or because they are not so adept or because they are lazy, or because of something else, are content a draw from a copy made by a person who is near the statue. If they are favorably disposed, they may draw from the copy which they consider the best or is regarded as the best. Such copyists are the followers, the active sectarians of an idea. Others still lazier, who dare not trace a line for fear of committing a mistake, buy a ready-made copy, perhaps a photograph or a lithographic reproduction. Not only are they satisfied with it, but are proud of it. They are the passive sectarians, who believe everything because they don’t want to do any thinking themselves.
Who, then, taking his own as the standard, can properly judge the drawings of others? To be fair, he would have to move to the same place occupied by each and other student and judge according to the viewpoint of each. What is more, he would have to place his eyes at the same height and distance as every other student did. The curves of his retina would have to be adjusted in such a manner that they would be the same as those of every other. He would have the same conditions of refraction, and the same artistic taste.
Your Reverence cannot say that, see from all angles, truth will present the same form. That would be true only to Him who is everywhere. To us, mathematical truths are the only ones that present themselves in one way because they are like plane figures. But religious, moral and political truths are figures with extension and depth. They are complex truths, and human intelligence has to study them separately.
From the way I look at it, nobody can judge the beliefs of others, using his own as the only criterion. Before discussing such beliefs, he should consider his point of departure in order to determine whether he has chosen the dark side (pessimism) or the bright side (optimism) or an adequate combination of both to create a beautiful chiaroscuro.
And if it is very hard to put oneself on the same point of view as that of another in the material world, how much harder when one has to deal with the hidden and complicated moral world?
This is neither the time nor the occasion to tell you why my point of view is different from yours. What mine is I could explain if I thought you were interested in it. However, this letter is now getting too long. I shall therefore leave the matter until you ask for it.
But before I close, I should like to register my astonishment at your conclusion, attributing to me more than I deserve. "I would have liked to go further on certain points," you say, "especially to refute your ideas of separatism, for the triumph of which you believe you are heaven-sent."
Frankly, I would not wish to suppose that Your Reverence has the propensity to jump to rash conclusions. Nor would I wish to believe that you are somewhat influenced by the common habit in the Philippines of resorting to the stratagem of charging an opponent with filibusterismo, separatism, patriotism, etc. I would rather believe that I failed to express myself clearly, only that Your Reverence quoted the paragraphs from which you drew your conclusion. I have re-read them and found nothing at all to justify your assertion.
Does he who believes that he is God-sent or God-chosen doubt as I doubt? Do those who think they are predestined hesitate and err? Does not Your Reverence believe in conscience that the most humble creature has an end to serve on earth? Were there useless beings, beings whose existence was absolutely a matter of complete indifference, would it not be cruel to create them, knowing that the sum-total of suffering on this side of creation far exceeds that of joy or pleasure?
I could very well be a partisan to an idea –– in point of fact, I am –– but from being a partisan to being heaven-sent to make that idea triumph, there is a world of difference. Between the buck private who carries the gun and the general who directs the campaign there are many ranks to hurdle. Between the vanguard platoon and the army that makes the last charge and reaps the fruit of victory there is an entire battle.
And who says that my country’s welfare, which is all that I seek, can be attained only through separation?
So that Your Reverence may see for yourself that I have ever been a plain and simple man ready to bow to circumstances, I will let you know that I am now devoting my time to agriculture. To what else can one devote oneself in Dapitan? Imagine an envoy of Heaven planting coffee and cocoa! Risum teneatis (can you restrain your laughter)? I have bought several parcels of abandoned land from their owners. I am now constructing a small house on one of them. Since my lots are somewhat far, I am planning to request His Excellency to allow me to live in the midst of my plants so that I can cultivate them better. My lots are full of woods and stones and contain some fruit-bearing trees which prove beneficial to the monkeys in the neighboring forests. From the town the distance is about 25 minutes’ hike. One can reach the place better by using a baroto. That is how many used to go there. I t is difficult to use a banca. I intend to register the entire property once all the transactions are completed . . ."
