will do as he would have done, neither accept anything because
it is written, nor reject it because it does not fall in with your
prejudices--study out the truth for yourselves.

Introduction

In writing a biography, the author, if he be discriminating, selects,
with great care, the salient features of the life story of the one whom
he deems worthy of being portrayed as a person possessed of preeminent
qualities that make for a character and greatness. Indeed to write
biography at all, one should have that nice sense of proportion that
makes him instinctively seize upon only those points that do advance
his theme. Boswell has given the world an example of biography that
is often wearisome in the extreme, although he wrote about a man
who occupied in his time a commanding position. Because Johnson was
Johnson the world accepts Boswell, and loves to talk of the minuteness
of Boswell's portrayal, yet how many read him, or if they do read him,
have the patience to read him to the end?

In writing the life of the greatest of the Filipinos, Mr. Craig has
displayed judgment. Saturated as he is with endless details of Rizal's
life, he has had the good taste to select those incidents or those
phases of Rizal's life that exhibit his greatness of soul and that
show the factors that were the most potent in shaping his character
and in controlling his purposes and actions.

A biography written with this chastening of wealth cannot fail to
be instructive and worthy of study. If one were to point out but
a single benefit that can accrue from a study of biography written
as Mr. Craig has done that of Rizal, he would mention, I believe,
that to the character of the student, for one cannot study seriously
about men of character without being affected by that study. As
leading to an understanding of the character of Rizal, Mr. Craig has
described his ancestry with considerable fulness and has shown how the
selective principle has worked through successive generations. But
he has also realized the value of the outside influences and shows
how the accidents of birth and nation affected by environment plus
mental vigor and will produced Jose Rizal. With a strikingly meager
setting of detail, Rizal has been portrayed from every side and the
reader must leave the biography with a knowledge of the elements
that entered into and made his life. As a study for the youth of the
Philippines, I believe this life of Rizal will be productive o