JOSE RIZAL: THE MAN

AND THE HERO

“First in the Heart of the Filipinos”

JULIE F. ESTOPACE
BSA-IV
Jose Rizal, Not a Superman
 Rizal was not a “born angel”.
 More than once in Europe, when letters arrived telling of
atrocities against his family in Calamba, he was heard to swear
with anger.
 Against his background it is remarkable that he at last
conquered the last vestiges of hatred, so that “ while he
resented the wrong of his people with towering indignation, he
viewed his own with an astonishing calm.
 It is a mistake also to call him a “super mind”.
Jose Rizal: The Learned Man
 Very Early he began to believed that the hope of his
country is education.
 Rizal’s entire life was devoted to an educational program.
 During the years of Propaganda in Europe he studied
prodigiously and inspired other young propagandist to
follow his example. That is the finest type of educator–
the man who studies with his students, so that one
hardly knows which is pupil and which is teacher, friends
in quest of the truth!.
 Rizal and his friends were all studying with an intense purpose.
 Their project was to find out what they could do for their
country.
 When fiction seemed the channel for the education of his
country, Rizal employed that channel and became the author of
two great novels.
 Rizal was himself the finest possible example of the fact that a
man teaches most by what he is.
“what he did to transform Dapitan by the cooperation of his
neighbors, introducing new ideas in agriculture, machinery, health
sanitation, and town beautification, is now, forty years later, being
called “the newest idea on education”.
Jose Rizal: The Scientist
 He plunged into Sociology and Ethnology knowing that the
Filipinos had been grossly underestimated by Spain.
 Dr. Ferdinand Blumentrit – Regarded Rizal as his own son.
 Dr. Rudolph Virchow(greatest scientist, philosopher and
democrat of Berlin) became his friend.
 Professor Fredrich Ratzel- A great historian and another intimate
friend of Rizal, wrote a long glowing tribute to his scholarship.
 Dr. A.B Meyer- collaborated with Rizal and Blumentrit in
annotating a Chinese Codicil of the Middle Ages.
 Dr. L de Wecker – is the leading oculist of France, found in Dr.
Jose Rizal a colleague and close friend, as did the German Dr.
Schuler.
 He plunged into languages because he wanted to read what
the greatest minds in all tongues had to offer.
 He was more interested in human life than in any other,
because here he found a great wrong that need to be righted.
“Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”
 Rizal was eye-minded. Birds, plants and insects—all life–
interest him.
Jose Rizal: The
Reformer
 Rizal was to the Philippines what the reformers like Girolamo
were to the reformation in Europe.
 It became necessary for Rizal and the other real students
among the Filipino exiles in Europe to study theology and the
history of the church in an endeavor to discover an answer to
their religious and Church problems.
 It was not Rizal’s liberal views that got him into trouble, nor
anything he ever said against Spain, but his frank
condemnation of the friars.
 Governor General Despujol said Rizal made “attacks on the
monastic orders, and more or less casuistically wishes to
believe that this is compatible in the Philippines with respect
towards the Catholic faith.”
 Rizal did not wish to separate from the Catholic Church. He
wanted to be the kind of Catholic whose mind was free to
follow his own reason.
Jose Rizal: The
Athlete
 From child his shoulders were high as his chest narrow, with
a tendency to sickliness. He corrected this in the gymnasium
and by fencing half hour everyday.
 He was nervous temperament with a trembling hand, so he
practiced shooting to stead his hand until he became number
one among the Filipinos in Europe.
 After his visit to Japan, where he studied Jujitsu, he practiced
at Japanese exercises everyday.
Jose Rizal’s Methodical
Habits

From his days in the Ateneo, Rizal planned out every activity
of his day and then stuck to his plan.
 Whenever he was and whatever his aim, in any country he
visited, the first thing he did was to make schedule of his time
and fasten this to the edge of his bed. He obeyed his
schedules with the regularity of a machine, not only for a day
or a month or a year, but all his life.
 “such was his punctuality and his enthusiasm for study that
he would abandon any ceremony, no matter how important it
might be, if the hour he had previously arranged had arrived,
and go home to his books.-Tomas Arejola.
Jose Rizal: A Man of
Morality
 The men who knew him best are most emphatic in saying
that he lived “the noblest, cleanest life of his generation.
He made himself a certain rules of conduct…”
 Dr. Baldomero Roxas says that Rizal’s friend could depend
upon his word better than upon the oath of other men. “If
Rizal says a thing, it is as good as done.”
 “ I do not think Rizal would be popular if he lived now.”
 “He was too Puritanical, too much of a rigid
disciplinarian for our day. We all admired his severe
self-discipline.”
 Rizal in his all life never broke a Promise! No man on
earth could persuade him to do what he considered
dishonorable.
Jose Rizal’s Social Qualities

 Stern and inflexible as he was in dealing with

himself, he was generous and kindly towards
everybody else.
Jose Rizal: A Man of Courage
 His consuming life purpose was the secret of his moral
courage. Physical courage, it is true, was one of his
inherited traits. But that high courage to die loving his
murderers, which he at last achieved, that cannot be
inherited. It must be forged out in the fired of suffering
and temptation.
 It required courage to write his two great novels.
 He had reached another loftier plateau of heroism when
he wrote a letter in Hong Kong, “to be open after my
death,” and sailed into the “trap” in Manila without any
illusion.
Rizal: Chief Filipino
Patriot
 Jose Rizal was chosen as a patriot to teach the Filipino
people the lesson of democracy.
 Reading the novels in School is an indication that Rizal
was chosen as the symbol of Philippine Nationalism.
 The password of the Katipunan happened to “Rizal.”
 Rizal was a man who inspired others to judge his
greatness. “The American were able to calm Filipinos in
the early 20th century by promoting him.”
Rizal: The First
Filipino
 Rizal was the first who sought to “unite the whole
archipelago and envisioned a compact and homogenous
society of old tribal communities from Batanes to the Sulu
Sea, based on common interest and mutual protection…”
 Rizal is the first in the heart of Filipinos
 No single person or groups of persons were responsible
for making the Greatest Malayan the Number One Hero of
his People. Rizal himself, his own people and the foreigner
all together contributed to make him the greatest and
martyr of his people.