José Rizal
Philippine Patriot
Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria MorirPage i
In the Philippine Islands the American Government has tried, and is trying, to carry out exactly what the greatest geniusand most revered patriot ever known in the Philippines, José Rizal, steadfastly advocated,
—Theodore Roosevelt, then President of the United States, in a public address at Fargo, N. D., April 7, 1903.
Philippine Money and Postage Stamps, with the Rizal Portrait
The Portrait of Rizal in 1883 Painted in Oil by Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo.
Lineage Life and Labors
of
José Rizal
Philippine Patriot
A Study of the Growth of Free Ideas in the Trans-Pacific American Territory
By
Austin Craig
Assistant Professor Oriental History
University of the Philippines
Author of “The Study of José Rizal,” “El Lineaje del Doctor Rizal,” Etc.
Introduction by
James Alexander Robertson, L.H.D.
Manila
Philippine Education Company
1913
Dedication
To the Philippine Youth
The subject of Doctor Rizal’s first prize-winning poem was The Philippine Youth, and its theme was “Growth.” The study ofthe growth of free ideas, as illustrated in this book of his lineage, life and labors, may therefore fittingly be dedicatedto the “fair hope of the fatherland.”
Except in the case of some few men of great genius, those who are accustomed to absolutism cannot comprehend democracy. Thereforeour nation is relying on its young men and young women; on the rising, instructed generation, for the secure establishmentof popular self-government in the Philippines. This was Rizal’s own idea, for he said, through the old philosopher in “Nolime Tangere,” that he was not writing for his own generation but for a coming, instructed generation that would understandhis hidden meaning.
Your public school education gives you the democratic view-point, which the genius of Rizal gave him; in the fifty-five volumesof the Blair-Robertson translation of Philippine historical material there is available today more about your country’s pastthan the entire contents of the British Museum afforded him; and you have the guidance in the new paths that Rizal struckout, of the life of a hero who, farsightedly or providentially, as you may later decide, was the forerunner of the presentrégime.
But you will do as he would have done, neither accept anything because it is written, nor reject it because it does not fallin with your prejudices—study out the truth for yourselves.