In a short time there was left no last doubt of the seriousness of the revolt; with reason this time the Spanish colony cowered. The thirty-fourth since the beginning of Spanish dominion in the Philippines, it threatened at last to sweep that vicious anomaly into the sea. A man had arisen capable of verifying the most sanguine of Bonifacio’s prophecies, a college-bred farmer, without military training but with a strange gift of military prescience, able with an equipment of native genius to outwit, outmanœuver, and outlast the best of the Spanish commanders. Against the skill and restless energy of Emilio Aguinaldo they seemed to make no permanent progress, and one reading the records of those days is irresistibly reminded of Francis Marion and the Carolinas. If the regulars drove him hence to-day, he would attack them there to-morrow. A union of Filipino hearts such as Rizal, living, had hardly dared to dream of had been cemented by his death. For the first time the possibility of ridding all the Islands of all Spanish power laid hold upon determined and reasoning men, and there began a life and death struggle between light and darkness, the nineteenth century and the sixteenth. CHAPTER XVII RESULTS AND INFLUENCES In this long conflict character shone forth and latent ability, refuting old slanders on the race. The Filipino disclosed himself. By ancient repute the Malayan was cruel and treacherous; the test of warfare showed him to be much more humane than the Spaniard and much more sensible of honor and faith. He had been described as incapable of combined and sustained activities; he revealed himself as organizing a government out of chaos, coördinating the energies of peoples unused to common effort, launching a democracy founded upon the most advanced ideas of political philosophy, defending it with skill and tenacious courage comparable to the best traditions of the Swiss mountaineers. Men whose talents had never been suspected because they had never had a chance to function arose in the Filipino ranks to astonish their enemies and overwhelm prejudice. Great commanders appeared like Luna and del Pilar; statesmen and thinkers like Felipe Calderon; and profoundly philosophical and illuminating intellects like Apolinario Mabini. Next to Rizal himself, this was the greatest genius the Islands had produced and one that would have deserved eminence in any country or any time. He was come of poor people in the province of Batangas and had won an education partly through the pathetic sacrifices of his mother and partly through his own exertions, which in that time and place amounted to heroism. He was first in a school at Tanauan and then at the College of San Juan de Letran in Manila, where he earned his way by teaching. His mother’s hope had been that he would take holy orders; but his studies had made him skeptical instead of reverent; he revolted at the priesthood, and chose the bar, to which he was admitted in 1894.