Note 7 — Chapter XI · WHAT MANNER OF MAN

The other altercation was with Antonio Luna,7 afterward a famous commander in the army of the Philippine Republic. About a woman of Rizal’s acquaintance Luna made an unworthy remark, and Rizal sent him a challenge. Having possibly regained sobriety meanwhile, Luna withdrew the remark and apologized for it, whereupon the quarrel was made up without mortal arbitrament. In his chivalrous and unsullied attitude toward women Rizal was true to the finest traditions of his race. Among the faults of the Filipinos, lechery is assuredly not included. Except the Irish, no other people on earth have a higher conception of chastity and sex morality, nor adhere to it with greater tenacity. Retana wrote that Rizal had “a truly upright moral sense.” It was but an inadequate tribute. He was a champion of righteousness; his religion was like Wendell Phillips’s, “a battle not a dream.” When he wrote, “The good of my country, that is all I pursue,” he was not making platform epigrams but telling what the records confirm.