Next to Rizal himself, this was the greatest genius the Islands had produced and one that would have deserved eminence in any country or any time. He was come of poor people in the province of Batangas and had won an education partly through the pathetic sacrifices of his mother and partly through his own exertions, [[315]]which in that time and place amounted to heroism. He was first in a school at Tanauan and then at the College of San Juan de Letran in Manila, where he earned his way by teaching. His mother’s hope had been that he would take holy orders; but his studies had made him skeptical instead of reverent; he revolted at the priesthood, and chose the bar, to which he was admitted in 1894.
Like Bonifacio he was a great reader, but on different lines. The warehouse porter, hanging by night over such books as he could lay hands upon, was set aflame by the struggles of mankind against oppression, particularly by that which is the epitome and symbol of them all, the French Revolution. Mabini, cool and even-pulsed philosopher, was concerned not so much with the physical aspects of revolution as with its causes. If the human story told true, revolutions were some rebound of the spirit of man against a privileged class that held or sought to hold the rest as bondmen. As this conflict between two main forces occupied so much of the history he was analyzing with his keen sure mind, and as it seemed the only thing there of enduring importance, he molded from its pages a philosophy of human life and its import not unworthy of Jefferson and Mill. The basis of everything good he conceived to be liberty; without liberty there could be no light and no progress. With a coolly measuring eye, as an architect looks at a building, he went over the system of government erected by Spain in the Philippines and estimated its fatal defects as a structure no longer tenable, knowing well that its fall was overdue. [[316]]
Much more than Rizal he seems to have seized the fundamental facts about man’s capacity for self-government and the only way to uncover and develop that capacity. He, too, was of the cloister, and might have slipped likewise into the darling errors of the schoolmen about the magic keys to this wisdom believed to be buried in a classical education. He made no such error. Not even Jefferson was of a clearer faith. He accepted the whole democratic theory of government, not sentimentally but as the ultimate fact in human existence. On philosophical grounds, for unassailable reasons, popular rule was right; in the end the only human wisdom was the general thought. In the verdict of the majority he saw plainly the manifestation of the will of God.
He was not influenced by Bonifacio, of whose existence he seems to have been unaware until 1892. As one of the earliest members of La Líga Filipina he may have been influenced at one time by Rizal; but there was little chance and less need that he should be influenced by anybody. His was a mind accustomed to independent action; it seems always to have moved to its own conclusions in its own way.
He was an early recruit to the Katipunan, where, after a time, he became one of Bonifacio’s chief advisers. A stroke of paralysis crippled his body but left his mind clear and active. When the storm burst and official lunacy raged in Manila, his physical infirmities prevented his flight with his fellows. Trapped among other unfortunates, a drum-head doomed him to be shot. It is likely the Government knew little of his real connection with the Katipunan [[317]]and nothing of his capacity to cause trouble. The sentence of death upon him was delayed. At last, homicidal mania spent itself even in Manila. Then, because of his physical condition, he was set at liberty.
This was in 1897, when revolution had changed all the outlook in the Philippines and the governing class was beginning to doubt its destiny. For the next year he was undergoing medical treatment at the hot springs of Los Baños. In the summer of 1898 he made his way to the revolutionary forces and was thereafter their ablest counselor, the shrewd adviser of the commanders in the field, the first voice in all negotiations, and to the masses of people the endless source of inspiration; for in all emergencies, however sudden or perplexing, here was the heart indomitable.
In him as in Rizal, the mysteries of an unusual power resolve themselves at last into unusual character. What was Mabini’s character may be gathered from this decalogue he composed for his own guidance and that of his countrymen:
First. Thou shalt love God and thine honor above all things; God as the fountain of all truth, of all justice, and of all activity; and thine honor, the only power that will oblige thee to be faithful, just, and industrious.
Second. Thou shalt worship God in the form that thy conscience may deem most righteous and worthy; for in thy conscience, which condemns thine evil deeds and praises thy good ones, speaks thy God.
Third. Thou shalt cultivate the special gifts that God has granted thee, working and studying according to thine ability, never leaving the path of righteousness and justice, in order to attain to thine own perfection, by means whereof thou shalt [[318]]contribute to the progress of humanity. Thus thou shalt fulfil the mission to which God has appointed thee, and by so doing thou shalt be honored, and, being honored, thou shalt glorify thy God.
Fourth. Thou shalt love thy country after God and thine honor and more than thyself: for she is the only paradise which God has given thee in this life, the only patrimony of thy race, the only inheritance of thine ancestors, and the only hope of thy posterity; because of her, thou hast life, love, and interests, happiness, honor, and God.
Fifth. Thou shalt strive for the happiness of thy country before thine own, making of her the kingdom of reason, of justice, and of labor; for if she be happy, thou, together with thy family, shalt likewise be happy.
Sixth. Thou shalt strive for the independence of thy country; for only thou canst have any real interest in her advancement and exaltation, because her independence constitutes thine own liberty; her advancement, thy perfection; and her exaltation, thine own glory and immortality.
Seventh. Thou shalt not recognize in thy country the authority of any person that has not been elected by thee and thy countrymen; for authority emanates from God, and as God speaks in the conscience of every man, the person designated and proclaimed by the conscience of a whole people is the only one that can use true authority.
Eighth. Thou shalt strive for a republic and never for a monarchy in the country; for the latter exalts one or several families and founds a dynasty; the former makes a people noble and worthy through reason, great through liberty, and prosperous and brilliant through labor.
Ninth. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself; for God has imposed upon him the obligation to help thee, as upon thee the obligation to help him, and not to do to thee what he would not have thee do unto him; but if thy neighbor, failing [[319]]in this sacred duty, attempt against thy life, thy liberty, and thy interests, then thou shalt destroy and annihilate him, for the supreme law of self-preservation prevails.
Tenth. Thou shalt consider thy countryman as more than thy neighbor; thou shalt see in him thy friend, thy brother, or at least thy comrade, with whom thou art bound by one fate, by the same joys and sorrows, and by common aspirations and interests.
Therefore, as long as national frontiers subsist, raised and maintained by the selfishness of race and of family, with thy countryman alone shalt thou unite in a perfect solidarity of purpose and interest, in order to have force, not only to resist the common enemy but also to attain all the aims of human life.
Meantime, in the great events that had shaken this ancient theater of bold deeds, the freedom of which Mabini and his fellows had dreamed had more than once lightened before them. With the news of the discovery of the Katipunan and the cruelties of the hysteria in high places that followed next, the revolution spread swiftly to the provinces. Cavite, Batangas, Zambales, Tarlac rose as the clans rose in Scotland; a remarkable fact, for here had been no preparation, and the Katipunan had not gone far beyond Manila walls. Nothing would seem to show more plainly that the psychology of the people had been all misread. At Rizal’s school he had noticed that the Spaniards deemed the natives submissive to kicks and insults when in reality wrath burned in the native heart. It was so here; while the “miserable Indio” had borne in silence the lash of the governing class he had not ceased at any time to resent its sting, and at the first call to revolt the whole Island went aflame. In a week [[320]]the comfortable fictions about Filipino incapacity were shattered by such ponderable facts as shot and shell, and Spain was retreating before the gravest crisis it had known in its 325 years of mismanagement.
Bonifacio’s forces increased daily. He gave battle to the regular troops sent against him and sometimes he beat them, sometimes he was beaten; but never was he dismayed. He developed captains among the young men that flocked around him; with others, this Emilio Aguinaldo of whom we have spoken. This was a youth lately out of college that had never set a squadron in the field nor the divisions of a battle knew more than Cassio. Yet he quickly showed such natural talents for command that he made his fame enduring among the military leaders of all times. He was born in the city of Cavite in March, 1869, and had studied at the College of San Juan with no more thought of being a soldier than of being a chiropodist. He had read his horoscope in the face of fate and perceived that he was to be a farmer and lead a quiet life among dingles and rice-plots. No sooner had he fingered his degree at San Juan than he hastened to fulfil this modest destiny by taking a farm in Cavite province and trying to better the yield of rice there. He had character, a presence, and a good mind; he had not been farming long when he was made municipal captain of his district. From his youth he seems to have been strong for nationalism, being a type of the class of young men rising in all parts of the Islands on whom the Spanish collar rested uneasily if at all, the class of which Rizal was the best example and natural leader. In 1894 he joined the Katipunan. When [[321]]Father Gil pulled the strings and revealed, to the fevered imagination of the Spaniards, the lair of this frightful monster, Aguinaldo was one of the first to proclaim the revolution. Chiefly it was his work that made Cavite an insurrectionary stronghold. In whatever he undertook he showed the executive faculty, the power to get things done quickly and efficiently, and a cool, hardy courage that no emergency could shake. Bonifacio advanced him to the highest commands, and in each instance the result justified the election, for the man had undoubtedly an instinct for war.