BRINDIS BY RIZAL
(Full text of Rizal speech at a banquet in honor of Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, Madrid,
June 25 1884)
In rising to speak I have no fear that you will listen to me with superciliousness,
for you have come here to add to ours your enthusiasm, the stimulus of youth,
and you cannot but be indulgent. Sympathetic currents pervade the air, bonds
of fellowship radiate in all directions, generous souls listen, and so I do not fear
for my humble personality, nor do I doubt your kindness. Sincere men
yourselves, you seek only sincerity, and from that height, where noble
sentiments prevail, you give no heed to sordid trifles. You survey the whole field,
you weigh the cause and extend your hand to whomsoever like myself, desires
to unite with you in a single thought, in a sole aspiration: the glorification of
genius, the grandeur of the fatherland!
Such is, indeed, the reason for this gathering. In the history of mankind there are
names which in themselves signify an achievement-which call up reverence and
greatness; names which, like magic formulas, invoke agreeable and pleasant
ideas; names which come to form a compact, a token of peace, a bond of love
among the nations. To such belong the names of Luna and Hidalgo: their
splendor illuminates two extremes of the globe-the Orient and the Occident,
Spain and the Philippines.
As I utter them, I seem to see two luminous arches that rise from either region to
blend there on high, impelled by the sympathy of a common origin, and from
that height to unite two peoples with eternal bonds; two peoples whom the seas
and space vainly separate; two peoples among whom do not germinate the
seeds of disunion blindly sown by men and their despotism. Luna and Hidalgo
are the pride of Spain as of the Philippines-though born in the Philippines, they
might have been born in Spain, for genius has no country; genius bursts forth
everywhere; genius is like light and air, the patrimony of all: cosmopolitan as
space, as life and God.
The Philippines' patriarchal era is passing, the illustrious deeds of its sons are not
circumscribed by the home; the oriental chrysalis is quitting its cocoon; the dawn
of a broader day is heralded for those regions in brilliant tints and rosy dawn-
hues; and that race, lethargic during the night of history while the sun was
illuminating other continents, begins to wake, urged by the electric' shock
produced by contact with the occidental peoples, and begs for light, life, and the
civilization that once might have been its heritage, thus conforming to the
eternal laws of constant evolution, of transformation, of recurring phenomena,
of progress.
