Note 5 — Chapter XI · WHAT MANNER OF MAN

Once he wrote of some pupils of his that he was teaching them to behave like men.5 It was a point of weight with him. His conception of a man was one that had at all times himself in full command. This virtue he had practised assiduously from those old days at the Ateneo when first he perceived its splendors; and now he was so truly captain of his own soul that, as we have seen, he could endure privations, subdue appetites, and urge himself along his road by the sheer force of his will. He was the greater part of his life desperately poor; yet if he had been willing to practise his profession for gain a great fortune was within his grasp. In whatsoever conditions he found himself he still tried to adhere to that plan he had adopted at the Ateneo of apportioning his day according to a schedule. He was more careful of his time than a miser of his gold; he would waste no hour. To his friends he admitted that when he sat silent in company and seemed to be moody he was composing his next article for “La Solidaridad” or a new chapter in one of his books. He was the least superstitious of men, but for years he had a presentiment that he would die by shooting. Once crossing Bagumbayan Field he pointed to the place of execution and said to a companion, “On that spot I shall some day be put to death by a firing-squad.” As a final light upon a singular character, it is to be noted that he was not oppressed by this foreboding. It was accompanied in his mind, as nearly as one can discern, with a conviction that the cause for which he stood must have its victims, and to this extent and no farther showed in him the fatalism supposed to be a distinctive trait of the Malay.