11 November 1892

Dapitan

Rizal is grateful for a copy of Kempis’ Imitation of Christ, of Fr. Chirino, Fr. Delgado, and Cartasde los Misineros – Brilliant defense of his espousal of the Philippine cause – Noli me Tangere is not inspired by any resentment or by Germans – He is not a Protestant – He prefers “light” to “shade” – He bears his misfortunes philosophically.

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Dapitan, 11 November 1892

VERY REVEREND FATHER PABLO PASTELLS

MY VERY REVEREND FATHER,

Before answering your precious letter, I must thank you for the Kempis that you have presented to me. I had already leafed through the French translation and I have liked it so much that I consider it no little luck to have it now in Spanish, though they assure me that it is even better in its Latin original. Pearls abound in its pages and scarcely do I come across an axiom that my imperfect discernment cannot comprehend. With justifiable reason it has been translated into almost all languages, even into Tagalog by Fr. Vincente Garcia, one of the cannons of the Cathedral.

I appreciate likewise the works of Fr. Chirino and of Fr. Delgado and the Cartas de los Misioneros that you present to me, according to Fr. Sanchez. I have asked for these works as a purchase, otherwise I would not have dared to ask for them for I do not believe I deserve from any one so many proofs of kindness nor do I have anything with which to return them. But Your Reverence, being of a lofty mind, will say that you give without ulterior motive, guided more by the goodness of your heart than by the merits or gratitude of the recipient and because you know that all that is done for a selfish end becomes odious, because it is converted into a kind of inescapable bond.

I shall overlook the forbearance with which Your Reverence received my previous letter and I will tell you nothing of the admiration that your letter inspires me in every respect. The time of Your Reverence is precious; it is not to be spent in listening to praises however deserved they are. I will pick up the phrases that have impressed me most and I am going to comment on them with due respect.

Your Reverence exclaims on the first page: “What a pity that such an excellent young man had not lavished his talents on the defense of better causes!”

It is very possible that there may be better ones than those I have embraced, but my cause is good and this is enough for me. Others undoubtedly will yield more profit, more renown, more honors, more glories, but the cane, on being born in this land, is for the purpose of supporting nipa huts and not the heavy bulk of the buildings of Europe. I do not regret neither the humbleness of my cause nor the meagerness of its rewards but the little talent that God has given me to serve it. If instead of weak cane I had been solid molave, better service I would be able to render. But He who has arranged it thus sees what the future brings, does not err in any of His acts, and knows very well for what use are even the smallest things.

As to honor, fame, or benefit that [I] might have been able to reap, I agree that all that is especially tempting to a young man like me of flesh and blood with so many weaknesses like anybody else. But as no one chooses the nationality or race in which he is born and, as at birth privileges or advantages inherent in both things are already in existence, I accept the cause of my country in the firm belief that He who has made me a Filipino would know how to forgive me for the mistakes that I commit, considering our difficult situation and the defective education that from birth we receive. Moreover, I do not aspire either for eternal fame or eternal renown; I do not aspire to equal others whose conditions, faculties, and circumstances could be and are in effect different from mine. My sole wish is to do what is possible, what is in my hands, the most necessary. I have glimpsed a little light and I believe that it is my duty to teach it to my countrymen. Others more fortunate, Sarda or anybody else, may soar to the summit.

Your Reverence does very well in limiting yourself to the philosophico-religious question laying aside politics for future discussion; I would ask you to reserve it ad kalendas graecas.[1] The subject is very delicate and it is not to be touched on in the conditions in which I am in, as Your Reverence can understand. Without liberty, a somewhat independent view would be provocative and another that is affectionate would be considered baseness or adulation, and I cannot be either a provoker or base or flatterer. In order that politics may be discussed luminously and may produce results it needs, in my opinion, large spheres of freedom [are needed].

Concerning the genesis of my works and writings, Your Reverence suggests to me an idea that I did not suspect when you allude to certain resentments and my wounded dignity. I do not deny the possibility that such might have happened with respect to my latest writings, but with respect to the first. . . With the sincerity and impartiality that a man is susceptible in examining his past, I have turned back my eyes to the fresh years of my youth and I have asked myself if sometimes resentment had moved the pen with which I wrote the Noli me tangere and my memory answered me in the negative. If on various occasions they have treated me with marked injustice; if my works had been passed over in silence with marked disdain; if against all reason, my complaints have been ignored, I was very young yet, I forgave more readily than I do now, and however deep were the wounds, they healed at last, thanks to the good crust with which nature has endowed me. There were not therefore swollen wounds; there were no thorns that had deepened; what there was was a clear vision of the reality of my motherland, the vivid memory of what was happening, and a dexterity to judge the etiology in such a way that not only could I paint the event but also divine the future, inasmuch as even now 1 see being realized with such accuracy what 1 called novel that I can say that I attend a performance of my own work, taking…

With regard to German inspirations, Protestant, etc. etc., I will tell you that I am sorry to see the erudite Fr. Pastells being confused on this point along with the populace who believes all they hear without previous examination. It is true that I have read German works, but it when I was already discussed what I need. But to suppose that Germans had inspired me is to be totally ignorant of the German people, their character, and their pursuits. Half of the Noli me tangere was written at Madrid, one fourth at Paris, and the other fourth in Germany. Witnesses were my countrymen who saw me working. The populace when they find themselves with something that surprise them, having no patience or calmness to analyze it, attribute it immediately to causes that preoccupy them most— if it is good, to friendly spirits, if it is bad, to enemies. In the Middle Ages everything bad was the work of the devil and everything good, of God or of His saints. The French of today see in every misadventure the hand of Germany, and so are the rest.

However, for the sake of truth, I will say that in correcting my work in Germany, I retouched it a great deal and shortened it further. But I have also tempered the fits, softening many phrases and reducing many things to their just proportion as I acquired a more ample vision of things seen from afar, as my imagination cooled off in the midst of the calm peculiar to that country. I can add more: No German knew about my work before its publication, neither Blumentritt, who always extolled the Catholic religion in his letters to me, nor Virchow, nor Jagor, nor Joest with whom I dealt in the societies to which I belonged, nor Schulzer in whose clinic I worked. Nevertheless I do not deny that the environment in which I lived might have influenced me especially on remembering my native land in the midst of that free people, industrious, studious, well-governed, full of confidence in their future, and master of their own destiny.

As to being a Protestant. . . If Your Reverence knew what I had lost for not accepting Protestantism, you would not say such a thing. Had I not always respected the religious idea, had I held religion as a matter of convenience or an art of getting along in this life, instead of being a poor exile, I would now be a rich man, free, and covered with honors. Rizal, Protestant! There bursts in my breast a laughter that only respect for all that Your Reverence say can contain. Your Reverence should have heard my discussions with a Protestant curate in the long summer twilights there in the solitude of Odenwald. There, in calm and slow conversation, with freedom to speak, we talked about our respective beliefs, of the morality of peoples, and the influence of their respective creeds on them. A great respect for the good faith of the adversary and for the most contrary ideas that must necessarily arise due to the difference in race, education, and age, led us almost always to the conclusion that religions, whatever they might be, should not make men enemies of one another but rather brothers and real brothers. From these conversations, that were repeated almost every day for a period of more than three months, I do not believe I obtained anything, if my judgement does not deceive me, but a profound respect for every idea sincerely conceived and practiced with conviction.

Almost every month a Catholic curate of a little town on the banks of the Rhine went there to visit him, and this curate, intimate friend of the Protestant, gave me an example of Christian fraternity. They considered themselves two servants of the same God and instead of spending their time quarreling, each one fulfilled his duty, leaving it to their Lord to judge afterwards who had interpreted better His will.

I am very grateful for your immense charity when you say: “If with the blood of my true veins that I could erase those premises, etc., etc.…..” It is true that my situation is not very pleasant, accustomed as I am to live under other atmospheres, to enjoy the liberty necessary for man to be responsible for his acts; it is true I have to deprive myself of many things, nay, to repress myself; that the loss of the family, the destruction of a future prepared during my whole youth, the seclusion from the social world — all constitute a great penalty, but who does not have regrets in this life? A bit of philosophy and another bit of resignation will make me bear my little sorrows. What is my misfortune compared with that of many others? I know too well that there are better trees that provide better shade, but in the midst of the gloom that reigns in my country I do not look for the shade, I prefer light.

“And what dark and cloudy weather is glimpsed for his future!” Thus Your Reverence ends the paragraph in which the kindness of your heart can be seen. What can we do about it? The tempest will pass away and at the worst, I shall pass away with it. There are the beautiful pages of the Kempis that will tell you that “in this world there cannot be perfect security nor complete peace,” that “the life of man on the earth is miserable,” etc. It is so brief and the happiest is so full of bitterness that in truth it is not worthwhile to sacrifice a conviction for round pieces of metal or in the form of a cross. And besides, it is all a question of temperament — some seek happiness in riches, in honors; others in humiliating and bending their fellowmen; others in making the rest believe in what they themselves do not believe in or in believing in what nobody else believes; others are contended with their self-respect, with directing themselves cautiously, etc. Affaires d’education as the French would say; egoism, the philosophers would say… And who knows if the tempest that Your Reverence foretell, besides pulling out this weak plant, will not knock down century-old trees or at least shake them and tear off their branches, clear the air charged with the miasma that the stagnation of so many centuries has been exhaling in ominous silence? Who knows? Who can foresee all the consequences of an act? Let the tempest be welcome if it will produce something good, the advancement of my native land, if it can attract the favorable attention of Mother Spain to her eight million subjects who entrust their future to her!

Beautiful and accurate I find the similes that Your Reverence adduces from the genesis and conception of truth by the human mind. I will not deny the possibility that truth might have polarized in passing through my understanding. Polarization is a phenomenon presented by crystals when they have been pressed and compressed in their manufacture. How can I deny—moreover, since I am a man and am fallible, I agree—that our intelligence cannot embrace all knowledge nor all truths, principally those that can be known only through time and manifold experience, and I believe more, I believe that, with the exception of mathematical truths, scarcely have we a few, more or less pure, more or less imperfect. In social, moral and political questions we move in such darkness (I speak for myself) that many times we confuse the truth with our convenience, if we do not gag it in order to let our passions speak. I also agree that our judgment is often deceived, our reason errs, but Your Reverence will also agree that only reason knows how to correct its blunders, only reason knows how to rise each time from its falls that it must suffer perforce in its long pilgrimage through the earth. Humankind in its greatest madness has not been able to extinguish that lamp given to it by God. Its light has dimmed at times and man has erred on his way but such a condition passes, afterwards its light shines more brightly, more powerfully, and the errors of the past are recognized in its rays and the abysses of the future are pointed out.

Of course I admit with Your Reverence that supernatural (divine) light is much more perfect than human reason. Who will doubt that Torch when we see [in] this world the effects of the tiny spark bestowed on mankind? What will God’s reason be like when that of the inhabitant of a tiny world flung by Him into space like a snail among the giants of the sea surprises me? But, who with justifiable reason can call himself the reflector of that Light in our little planet? All religions pretend to hold the truth. What religions do I say? Each man, the most ignorant, the most giddy, pretends to be right. On seeing so many beliefs and so many convictions on hearing the disdain of every sectarian on the beliefs of others and the marvels, miracles, testimonies with which every religion pretends to prove its divinity or divine origin at least; on seeing intelligent, honest, and studious men born in the same climate in the same society, with the same customs, with the same desires to perfect and save themselves, profess in religious matters diverse creeds, a simile comes to my mind that I allow myself to transcribe here so that Your Reverence may understand my manner of thinking. I imagine men engaged in the study of the truth like students of drawing who copy a statue seated around it, some nearer, others farther who from a certain height, who at its feet, see it in different manners; and the more they try to do their best in being faithful in their drawings, the more they differ from one another. Those who copy directly from the original are thinkers who differ from one another for starting from different principles, founders of schools or doctrines. A large number, for being very far, for not seeing well, for not being so skillful, for laziness, or for any other analogous cause, are contented with making a copy from another copy of the one nearest to them, or if they are willing, from what seemed to them best or what passes for the best. These copyists correspond to the partisans, the active sectarians of an idea. Others even more lazy, not daring to draw a single line in order not to commit a blunder, buy themselves a ready-made copy, perhaps a photograph, a lithograph, and they are so contented and cheerful. To this group belong the passive sectarians, those who believe everything in order not to think. Well now, who is to judge the drawings of the others taking his own for norm? He would have to move to the same place and judge from the same point of view of the other. And even for this, he ought to place his eyes at the same height and at the same distance in which the other had his; he ought to have the curves of the retina identical to those of the other, the same conditions in the refracting media, and the same artistic sense.

And Your Reverence should not tell me that the truths, seen from all points will always show the same form; this would be for Him who is everywhere. For us, mathematical truths which are like plane figures present themselves only in one form. But religious, moral, and political truths are figures of extent and depth, they are complex truths, and human intelligence has to study them in parts.

From my way of thinking I infer that no one can judge the beliefs of others taking his own for norm. Before discussing them the point of departure should be studied in order to see which was preferred, whether the side of the shadows (pessimism), or the part wholly bathed in light (optimism), or the adequate combination of the two to turn out a beautiful chiaroscuro.

And if it is very difficult to place one’s self in the same point of view of others in the material world, how much more difficult it is in the moral that is complex and hidden?

This is not the time or the occasion to tell Your Reverence why I have a point of view different from yours. I could tell Your Reverence what is mine if I knew it would interest you. But this letter is getting already too long and I will lay aside this question for the time Your Reverence may ask me about it.

I do not wish, however, to close this letter without manifesting to you my surprise at the conclusion of Your Reverence attributing to me more than I give myself when you say: “I should like to go further in some considerations, especially to refute your ideas of separatism for whose triumph you believe yourself sent, etc.” I do not wish to suppose that Your Reverence has a tendency to rash judgments or to believe that you are somewhat influenced by the general custom in the Philippines of resorting to filibusterismo, separatism, patriotism, etc., etc.; I would rather believe that I had expressed myself poorly if Your Reverence would not quote me the paragraphs from which you deduce such a conclusion; but I reread them and I do not find in them such thought. Is the one who believes himself sent by God doubt as I do? Do those who believe themselves predestined waver and err? But in conscience, does not Your Reverence believe that the humblest creature has some purpose to fulfill on earth? If there were useless beings, beings whose existence were absolutely unimportant, knowing that in this world there are more sorrows than pleasures, is it not cruelty to create them? I can very well be the partisan of an idea and I believe I am, but from this to the very envoy of God to make it triumph, there is a distance. Between the soldier who wields a pickaxe and the general who directs the campaign, there is a whole army register; between the advanced guard and the last charge that will gather the fruit of victory there intervenes transcendental time, there intervenes a whole battle. And next, who tells Your Reverence that the welfare of my country, which is all I pursue, can only be found in separatism?

And so that Your Reverence may see that I am always the common and ordinary man who submits to circumstances, I shall inform you that I am engaged in farming. To what else can one engage in Dapitan? Your Reverence sees an envoy of God planting coffee and cacao! Risum teneatis![2] I have bought here from different owners several parcels of abandoned land; I build myself a little house and as the land is a little far, I am intending to ask His Excellency to permit me to live on it in order to farm it better. It is hilly and rocky with some fruit trees which benefit the monkeys of the forests. It is about 25 minutes from the town; or better it can be reached in baroto,[3] a thing many do, for sometimes there cannot be found a banca. I intend besides to register the property as soon as all the negotiations are concluded.

03-765 [Reformists]