At Madrid he found the situation much changed in the five years of his absence. In the Filipino colony the feeling had gained that from such a Government nothing was to be won by appeals and agitation. For an illustration men pointed to Cuba. Petitions, reasonings, arguments, beseechings wrought nothing. Whatever Cuba had gained was tribute to its sword. Against this Rizal still counseled. Even in such a crisis he could not rid his mind of the doctrine of fitness for self-government, and so long as he reasoned more than he allowed himself to feel, he could not compromise with his overmastering horror of war. In this, again, he had outstripped the current thought of his age. A world without war was then the dream of a few enthusiasts, looking to another generation or to some mystic transformation in the chemistry of human blood; what were called practical men went on devising new torpedoes and more powerful explosives for the next conflict. In his own way, different from theirs, he was himself as truly a practical man as ever lived, and a warless humanity was no dream to him; he thought he could see it close at hand. He thought he could see his fellow-men of all lands surrendering the lunacy of combat for a rational settlement of international troubles by agreement and arbitration. Out of the reflexes of his own thought and spirit he was instructed that the hour for this transformation had come. Up to that time, certainly, the lessons of history, his favorite study, were against him. There can be no doubt that a condition of oppression or general injustice is in essence a condition of violence, and so far in the human story half-emancipated man has found no way to end one condition of violence except by means of another. “It will have blood, they say, blood will have blood,” might have been written across the gates of every house of tyranny. The hope that the frightful wrongs laid upon the Filipinos could be an exception to this primordial rule was alluring to a soul like Rizal’s. We can see now that in the existing stage of civilization it was no better founded than the other deceptive notion that the sufferings of the common people of France under the Ancient Régime could have had any result but retribution in kind. As a matter of strict fact, the Reign of Terror was established years before Dr. Guillotin thought of his device of “a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history.” It was in reality assured by the fathers of many innocent and well meaning ladies and gentlemen whose heads it rolled into the Seine—a painful thought, but historically indisputable. The fierce philosophy of these records Rizal could not assimilate; the poet in him revolted at the ugliness of hatred; he had too genuine a love of his own kind to tolerate cruelty. Whether in the mass or toward individuals he could not endure it. These seem to constitute the only set of facts his mind was unable to absorb.