On March 23, 1876, he received the degree of bachelor of arts with the highest honors from the Ateneo, and in April, 1877, [55] matriculated at the ancient university of Santo Tomas. [56] Some of his studies he continued to pursue at the Ateneo, which he always preferred. The choice of a career still weighed upon him; in what way of life, business or profession, could he fit best and furnish the most help? He looked upon the fertile soil of the Islands, he looked upon the medieval methods of cultivation in use there, and he half resolved to be a scientific farmer and show the wonders of which the soil was capable. He looked upon the general ignorance of the laws of health among his people and in the end determined to be a physician, choosing diseases of the eye to be his specialty. Oculists were almost unknown in the islands, even poor ones; and diseases of the eye were wide-spread there as in all tropical countries. Every year many Filipinos went blind whose sight science might easily have saved. For lack of competent treatment his own mother was likely to share this dread calamity. To the profession he had chosen he surrendered nothing of his addiction to the arts; he modeled, painted, drew, and sang as before. Without yielding to the extravagant eulogy that has attended his fame in recent years, it appears certain that he was in art one of those rare creatures that are endowed at once with two great faculties. He could create and he could analyze; he could feel and he could reason; and on either side his activities could be carried on with the same native ease. About the time he was entering Santo Tomas the Lyceum staged another poetic tourney, this time to celebrate the glory of Cervantes. Rizal was a competitor with an allegory called “The Council of the Gods,” in which he developed a critical exposition of Cervantes and his art, lucid, just, and competent; as remarkable a production as the imaginative part of his work. The awarding of the prizes in this competition resulted in a painful incident that took its place in the chain of fateful things now drawing him away. Mystery surrounds the facts and always will, but it appears that the competitors entered the lists with assumed names, and that Rizal won the first prize; but when he was discovered to be a Filipino the laurel was taken from him and bestowed upon a Spaniard. [57] It was a slash in the old wound; not even in that domain of art, supposed to have shut doors upon the prejudices of nation and birth, was the Filipino to be allowed to forget his inferiority. His fellows at the Ateneo felt that he had been wronged, and knowledge of the general resentment took nothing from the ill will with which he was viewed by the governing class. In all lands it is the fate of the foreign colony to be swayed by puerile emotions; among these in the Spanish colony of Manila suspicion led all the rest.