222 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



VIEWS OF DR. RIZAL, THE FILIPINO SCHOLAR, UPON" 



RACE DIFFERENCES.* 



"DROFESSOR 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 fur Ethnograpliie (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 culti- 

 vated Filipino making comparative studies of himself and the domi- 

 neering whites in order to discover the cause of their assumption of 

 superiority, yet conscious all the while of the hopelessness of protest- 

 ing 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, ap- 

 parently, when speaking of education in the Philippines, only the ele- 

 mentary 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 sig- 

 nificant 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. Jose 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 phi- 

 losophy. He continued his medical studies in Paris, Heidelberg, 

 Leipzig and Berlin, and also devoted himself to linguistic and ethno- 

 graphical investigations, being made in consequence a member of the 



* Translated by R. L. Packard, Washington, D. C. 



