Dapitan
Blumentritt’s photograph – Rizal teaching boys Spanish, English, arithmetic, and geometry and in payment they work for him – Dr. Rost thinks that the dialects here can be grouped into two: Bisayo and Tagalog – Rizal thinks that these two languages can be fused into one through phonetical changes – Intelligence is inherited, according to Rizal – The intelligent races today are so after a long hereditary process.
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Dapitan
4 July 1895
Jose Rizal
Mr. Fernando Blumentritt
Leitmeritz, Bohemia, Austria
My very dear friend Fernando,
Your letter of 5 May arrived here with the photograph, which I appreciate most sincerely. I see that you are stout and smiling and I am very much pleased. I forget my anemia and my incipient ailment. Alas, how I wish I could stay like you beside those pines whose mere sight seems to refresh me, for they bring me the curative effluence of the northern climate! I am going to make benches similar to the one on which you are seated.
I must have told you before that I spend my leisure hours teaching some children who in payment work for me. I have already taught them Spanish, mathematics until equations of the first grade inclusive, elementary geometry, and English, in case they travel. Now I am teaching them geography, using your portable atlas. Die sind arme, gutmiitige knaben deren Eltern nichts zum Buchankaufen haben [They are poor, good-natured boys whose parents do not have enough to buy them books]. I would teach them Philippine geography in detail if I had a good map, but as there is none it is necessary to be resigned.
I think I shall write in English my Tagalog grammar and I am going to send it to Dr. Rost for the correction of the mistakes in English. Now that I am studying Bisayan, I understand that only through the orthography that I proposed can be easily explained certain phonetical changes in these languages. Dr. Rost thinks that these languages can be grouped into two: Bisayo and Tagalog. I believe that Bisayan and Tagalog can be fused into one through phonetical changes that I will propose. The difference is slightly greater between the Plattdeutsch [Low German] and the German of the south than between the Tagalog and the Bisayan.
Concerning the limited intelligence in races, after a detailed study of the subject, I believe like you do, that there is and there is none. With regard to intelligence, it is like riches. There are rich nations and poor nations; there are rich individuals and poor individuals. The rich who pretends to have been born rich is mistaken – he was born as poor and as naked as the child of a slave. What he has is that he has inherited the accumulated wealth of his ancestors. I believe then that intelligence is inherited. Races which have been obliged to work with their brains on account of certain special conditions, have developed them more, then have transmitted them to their descendants who have later continued on, etc., etc. European nations are rich, but the present nations cannot say with temerity that they have been born rich. They needed centuries of struggle, wise combinations, liberty, laws, thinkers, etc. who bequeathed to them these riches. The intelligent races today are so after a long process of heredity.
I remain alone here in my house to work on my Tagalog grammar.
I greet the whole family; euer Rizal lebt an euch immer denkerd und bleibt seinen liebsten eqigtreu [Your Rizal lives thinking always of you and remains always faithful to those who appreciate him].
Your faithful friend,
José Rizal
05-860 [100 Letters]