European Travels and Study

So, on May 5, 1882, after he had been recalled by cipher telegram from Kalamba where he had been staying for a short visit, he embarked for Singapore on the mail steamer "Salvadora" and after the six day that the journey then took he transferred to a foreign passenger ship that carried him to Barcelona. There was quite in distinguished passenger list of returning officials and their families among whom Rizal figured, according to his passport, as "José Mercado a native of the district of Santa Cruz." Paciano furnished the funds but as soon as his father learned of José's going he arranged to send him money regularly through Antonio Rivera. This round about way was necessary as life would not have been pleasant for any provincial family known to have sent one of its sons abroad to be educated, especially for a family like the Mercado’s who were tenants on an estate which was part of the university endowment.

From Barcelona Rizal quickly went to Madrid and continued his double course in philosophy and letters and in medicine. Besides he found time for more lessons in drawing and painting, and studied languages under special teachers. In l884 he received the degree of Licenciate in Medicine and the following year, on his twenty-fourth birthday, the like degree in Philosophy and in Letters, and with highest honors.

On the voyage to Spain or just after arrival, Rizal wrote and sent back to a Manila Tagalog daily an article on love of native land, and he continued to write for the paper during the short time it lived.

The Filipino students in Spain knew Rizal by reputation, many of them had been schoolmates of his, and they enthusiastically welcomed him, but in their gayety he took no part. He recognized in everything else to have money to spend on books and his first purchases included "Picturesque America", "Lives of the Presidents of the United States", "The Anglo-Saxons", "The English Revolution” and other indications that then, as he said later, "the free peoples interested him most."

The affectation and love of display of some of his countrymen disgusted him and at the same time convinced him of a theory he later declared in regard to race prejudice. This same disgust, he reasoned, is felt toward the ostentatious new-rich and the braggart self-made man, only these when they come to their senses are no longer distinguishable from the rest of the world while the man of color must suffer for the foolishness of his fellows. So he who by nature was little inclined to be self-conceited, boasting or loud came to be even more unaffected, simpler in dress and reposeful in manner as he tried to make himself as different as possible from a type he detested. Yet this was at no sacrifice of dignity but rather brought out more strongly his voice of character. His many and close friendships with all who knew him, and- that his most intimate friends were of the white race, (one of his Spanish jailers even asked to be relieved of his charge because the association was making him too fond of his prisoner) seem to show that Dr. Rizal's theory was right.

One day, after an association aimed to help the Philippines had gone to pieces because no one seemed willing to do anything unless he were sure of all the glory, some of the students met in an effort to revive it. The effort was not successful and then Rizal proposed all joining in a book, illustrated by Filipino artists, to tell Spain about the real Philippines. The plan was enthusiastically received but though there was eagerness to write about the "The Filipina Woman" the other subjects were neglected. Rizal was disappointed and dropped the subject. Then he came across, in a secondhand bookstore, a French copy of "The Wandering Jew" and bought it to get practice in reading the language. The book affected him powerfully and he realized what an aid to the Philippines such a way of revealing its wrongs would be, but he dreaded the appearance of self-conceit in announcing that he was going to write a book like Eugene Sue's. So he said nothing to any one, yet the idea of writing Noli Me Tangere was constantly in his mind from the night of January of 1884 when he finished the French novel.

During his stay in Madrid, Dr. Rizal was made a freemason in Acacia Lodge No. 9 of the "Gran Oriente de España" at whose head was then Manuel Becerra, later Minister of Ultramar, or Colonies. Among the persons with whom he thus became acquainted were Manuel Ruiz Zorilla, Praxedes M. Sagasta, Emilio Castelar and Victor Balaguer, all prominent in the politics of Spain. However slight the association, it came in the formative period of the young student's life and turned his thoughts into constructive lines rather than destructive. He no longer thought only of getting rid of Spanish sovereignty but began to question what sort of a government was to replace it. At Barcelona he had seen the monument of General Prim whose motto had been "More liberal today than yesterday, more liberal tomorrow than in today" yet he knew how opposed the Spanish patriot had been to a Spanish republic because Spaniards were not prepared for it. So he resolved to prepare the Filipinos and the campaign of education that he saw being waged by Spaniards in Spain Rizal thought would be no more unpatriotic or anti-Spanish if carried on by a Filipino for the Philippines. Already he had become convinced of one political truth that was to separate him from other leaders of his countrymen, that the condition of the common people and not the form of the government is the all-important thing.

From Madrid, after a short trip through the more backward provinces because these were the country regions of Spain and so more fairly to be compared with the Philippines, Dr. Rizal in 1885 went to Paris and continued his medicine studies under an eye specialist. Association with artists and seeing the treasures of the city's rich galleries also assisted in his art education.

For the political part Masonry again was responsible. The Spanish Masonry of which Rizal was a member but held relations with a rival organization over which Prof. Miguel Morayta presided did not recognize the Grand Orient of France. So in Rue Cadet 16 he was initiated into this irregular body, which had been responsible for the French Revolution, and, because it did not require of its adherents belief in God, was an outcast in the Masonic world. There he heard much of the "rights of man" and again had it impressed upon him that it was the liberty of the people and not the independence of the government that made freedom.

The next year found Rizal in Germany, studying ophthalmology and enrolled as a student of law in the famous university at Heidelberg. During the vacation he visited Wilhelmsdorf and compared its simple villagers with the country folk of his own land. At this time he became acquainted with the great Masonic poet Goethe and from the Wilhelm Meister series, apparently among the most treasured books in his library, Dr. Rizal learned that man has duties as well as rights, So as a Mason he came to be of the philosophic school of the Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon peoples rather than of the political kind common in the Latin countries.

Leipzig was his next home and for its "Illustrated News" he wrote interestingly of his summer in Wilhelmsdorf. Here he met Dr. Jaegor in whose "Travels in the Philippines" he had read ten years before that "the Americans are evidently destined to bring to a full development the germs originated by the Spanish." With the great geographer he discussed the education and training needed to prepare his countrymen successfully to compete with an energetic, creative and progressive nation, for he recognized the justice of the criticism that his countrymen had dreamed away their best days.

Dr. Virchow, probably the best known scientist of that time, was another new acquaintance, destined to become, a close friend, By him Rizal was introduced into the Berlin Ethnographical Society and ten years later when the society was mourning the loss of the member whose illegal execution by the Spanish they considered a murder it was Dr. Virchow who presided in the memorial services.