nt; for this
reason his life will be studied to see what kind of hero he was, and
no attempt need be made to plead good character and honest intentions
in extenuation of illegal acts. Rizal was ever the advocate of law,
and it will be found, too, that he was always consistently law-abiding.

Though they are in the Orient, the Filipinos are not of it. Rizal once
said, upon hearing of plans for a Philippine exhibit at a European
World's Fair, that the people of Europe would have a chance to see
themselves as they were in the Middle Ages. With allowances for the
changes due to climate and for the character of the country, this
statement can hardly be called exaggerated. The Filipinos in the
last half of the nineteenth century were not Orientals but mediaeval
Europeans--to the credit of the early Castilians but to the discredit
of the later Spaniards.

The Filipinos of the remoter Christian barrios, whom Rizal had in mind
particularly, were in customs, beliefs and advancement substantially
what the descendants of Legaspi's followers might have been had these
been shipwrecked on the sparsely inhabited islands of the Archipelago
and had their settlement remained shut off from the rest of the world.

Except where foreign influence had accidentally crept in at the
ports, it could truthfully be said that scarcely perceptible advance
had been made in three hundred years. Succeeding Spaniards by their
misrule not only added little to the glorious achievement of their
ancestors, but seemed to have prevented the natural progress which
the land would have made.

In one form or another, this contention was the basis of Rizal's
campaign. By careful search, it is true, isolated instances of
improvement could be found, but the showing at its very best was
so pitifully poor that the system stood discredited. And it was the
system to which Rizal was opposed.

The Spaniards who engaged in public argument with Rizal were
continually discovering, too late to avoid tumbling into them, logical
pitfalls which had been carefully prepared to trap them. Rizal argued
much as he played chess, and was ever ready to sacrifice a pawn to
be enabled to say "check." Many an unwary opponent realized after
he had published what he had considered a clever answer that the
same reasoning which scored a point against Rizal incontrovertibly
established the Kalamban's major premise.

Superficial antagonists, to the detriment of their own reputations,
have