| VIEWS OF DR. RIZAL, THE FILIPINO SCHOLAR, UPON RACE DIFFERENCES.[1] |
PROFESSOR BLUMENTRITT, the German ethnologist, was a friend of Dr. Rizal, the famous and lamented Filipino scholar and ethnologist, and after his death published an account of his life and studies in the Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie (Bd. X., Heft II.), together with his views upon the comparative intellectual endowments of the white and colored (Filipino) races. A translation of portions of that paper is presented here. It is a curious and pathetic spectacle which is presented in the sketch—that of a cultivated Filipino making comparative studies of himself and the domineering whites in order to discover the cause of their assumption of superiority, yet conscious all the while of the hopelessness of protesting against fate.
Incidentally the study is instructive as illustrating the natural bent of Filipinos for higher studies, a feature of their character which is ignored by the American newspaper writers, who have in mind, apparently, when speaking of education in the Philippines, only the elementary studies taught in the public schools of the United States.
The anniversary of the execution of Dr. Rizal is observed in the Philippines, both by the native public and in the schools, where the day is known as Rizal day. It is a singular fact, and perhaps one significant of some trait in the character of the race, that the national hero of the Tagals was neither a military man nor a politician, but a man of intellectual gifts, and a student, who devoted his talents to his country and became a martyr to its cause. [Tr.]
Professor Blumentritt writes as follows:
On December 30, 1896, the Spanish authorities in Manila shot to death the greatest son of the Philippines, Dr. José Rizal, ostensibly because he had been an instigator of the insurrection then in full blast in the archipelago. Dr. Rizal was a Tagal, born in Calamba, a small city in the province La Laguna de Bay in Luzon. He was originally intended for the priesthood, but his own tastes inclined him to medicine and he accordingly studied that science in Manila and Madrid, at which latter university he took the degree of doctor of medicine and philosophy. He continued his medical studies in Paris, Heidelberg, Leipzig and Berlin, and also devoted himself to linguistic and ethnographical investigations, being made in consequence a member of the
- ↑ Translated by R. L. Packard, Washington, D. C.
