Lineage, Life and Labors of Jos Rizal, Philippine Patriot

Lineage, Life and Labors of Jos
Rizal, Philippine Patriot

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Title: Lineage, Life and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot
Author: Austin Craig
Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6867] [Yes, we are more than
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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 of the growth
of free ideas, as illustrated in this book of his lineage, life and labors,
may therefore fittingly be dedicated to 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. Therefore
our nation is relying on its young men and young women; on the rising,
instructed generation, for the secure establishment of popular

self-government in the Philippines. This was Rizal's own idea, for he
said, through the old philosopher in "Noli me Tangere," that he was not
writing for his own generation but for a coming, instructed generation
that would understand his hidden meaning.
Your public school education gives you the democratic view-point,
which the genius of Rizal gave him; in the fifty-five volumes of the
Blair-Robertson translation of Philippine historical material there is
available today more about your country's past than the entire contents
of the British Museum afforded him; and you have the guidance in the
new paths that Rizal struck out, of the life of a hero who, farsightedly
or providentially, as you may later decide, was the forerunner of the
present régime.
But you 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 preëminent
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