At Madrid he found the situation much changed in the five years of his absence. In the Filipino colony the feeling had gained that from such a Government nothing was to be won by appeals and agitation. For an illustration men pointed to Cuba. Petitions, reasonings, arguments, beseechings wrought nothing. Whatever Cuba had gained was tribute to its sword. Against this Rizal still counseled. Even in such a crisis he could not rid his mind of the doctrine of fitness for self-government, and so long as he reasoned more than he allowed himself to feel, he could not compromise with his overmastering horror of war.
In this, again, he had outstripped the current thought of his age. A world without war was then the dream [[203]]of a few enthusiasts, looking to another generation or to some mystic transformation in the chemistry of human blood; what were called practical men went on devising new torpedoes and more powerful explosives for the next conflict. In his own way, different from theirs, he was himself as truly a practical man as ever lived, and a warless humanity was no dream to him; he thought he could see it close at hand. He thought he could see his fellow-men of all lands surrendering the lunacy of combat for a rational settlement of international troubles by agreement and arbitration. Out of the reflexes of his own thought and spirit he was instructed that the hour for this transformation had come.
Up to that time, certainly, the lessons of history, his favorite study, were against him. There can be no doubt that a condition of oppression or general injustice is in essence a condition of violence, and so far in the human story half-emancipated man has found no way to end one condition of violence except by means of another. “It will have blood, they say, blood will have blood,” might have been written across the gates of every house of tyranny. The hope that the frightful wrongs laid upon the Filipinos could be an exception to this primordial rule was alluring to a soul like Rizal’s. We can see now that in the existing stage of civilization it was no better founded than the other deceptive notion that the sufferings of the common people of France under the Ancient Régime could have had any result but retribution in kind. As a matter of strict fact, the Reign of Terror was established years before Dr. Guillotin thought of his device [[204]]of “a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history.” It was in reality assured by the fathers of many innocent and well meaning ladies and gentlemen whose heads it rolled into the Seine—a painful thought, but historically indisputable. The fierce philosophy of these records Rizal could not assimilate; the poet in him revolted at the ugliness of hatred; he had too genuine a love of his own kind to tolerate cruelty. Whether in the mass or toward individuals he could not endure it. These seem to constitute the only set of facts his mind was unable to absorb. He could in four weeks master a language and could not in a lifetime well comprehend the caveman’s logic of blows.
This amiable strabismus half blinded him to what was really impending in his own country. The truth was that the System was slowly forcing a revolt there; not intentionally, but after the manner of all drunken power. To lay bare the iniquities of that System was to send against it the torch and ax. Every page of “Noli Me Tangere” was in effect a call to battle. He never suspected this, but fact it was nevertheless. To imagine, as he at one time imagined, that intrenched greed would without a struggle surrender its privileges and lay by the cracking of its whips was to imagine that which never was nor shall be. The reversion to primitive standards was inaugurated, not by Filipino revolutionists, but by the System itself, which, denying justice, left to the harassed multitudes nothing but revolution.
At this crux of his story, when he appeared at Madrid [[205]]as the champion of an impossible peace, and the eyes and hearts of all his countrymen were turning to him, the time may be good to describe the man that had already wielded so tremendous a power.
He was then in his thirty-first year. The first impression one had of him was of wholesome vigor and physical well-being. He was of rather slender build, but all of muscle and sinew compact, for he never remitted his exercises. In height, he was five feet, four inches; coming of what seems to Occidental eyes an undersized people. From long hours at his desk he had contracted a slight stoop. His handsome face retained its fine boyish oval, but rugged character and unshakable firmness were now stamped upon it, and an expression of melancholy. His eyes were still remarked for their brightness. His hands were small and shapely, his feet noticeably small.[1]
His voice was low in pitch, of a noble tonality, and so strangely vibrant that one hearing it at its best never forgot it. One of his rules was never to raise it; he spoke always with an identical restraint. With such a voice and with his flow of apt and picturesque language he was equipped for public speaking, in which he had made on several occasions a rather marked success; yet he always thought lightly of the art of oratory and refused to pursue it.
Whether among his friends or in his writings he had ordinarily little to say about himself, and there is but one recorded instance when he seemed to give way to [[206]]the bitter recollections that must at times have assailed him. On this occasion he said to a friend in London with whom he was walking:
“I have traveled around the world. I have studied the important nations by personal and direct observation. I have noted well all the races that have contributed to human progress. I speak all their languages and others. And yet,” he added with a melancholy smile, “I am to the friars merely a vulgar half-breed.”
At Madrid, one of his intimates from the Islands was Teodoro Sandiko, later to be a leader among his people and an honored member of the Philippine Senate. In a letter recalling their association, Senator Sandiko once wrote:[2]