His association with Virchow enlarged and enlightened his views concerning democracy and overcame much of the grave disadvantages of his birth. Men born under a monarchy have always this to overcome if they are to become effective soldiers of the Common Good. Virchow was a philosophical democrat that had seen, as in a long perspective, the ascent of man and had drawn thence an unshakable faith. Although Rizal was now more than ever a democrat, on calmly reviewing the state of his countrymen he believed that for his day the national independence of the Philippines was out of the question. Memories of the popular ignorance oppressed him. To be free, he thought, a people must know how to use freedom. It seems not to have occurred to him that there was no school but one in which that precious wisdom could be taught, and in it were and could be no text-books. For, whatever scholiasts may imagine and Utopians dream, it is experience and experience alone that tutors man in the good use of his freedom. The theory that a nation must wait until all its men have university degrees before it can be trusted with its destinies is either the dishonest handmaid of exploitation or, as in Rizal’s case, the footless product of the cloisters. Man, endowed with freedom, will use it wrongly and use it rightly; and which is the right way and which the wrong he will not know until responsibility enlightens him. After all, it is not wholly strange that even so excellent a mind as Rizal’s should have gone astray on this point; for he was codisciple of the schoolmen, and in his day schoolmen taught only his error. We need not on this account lower any estimate of his worth and genius. He could see that if in his day and with their antecedents the people of the Philippines should suddenly arrive at their independence they would probably make for a time but erratic use of it. What he could not see was that at its worst their condition then would be better than the blight and curse of their previous state, and that under the tuition of experience they would work out their problems and vindicate their capacity. But we have to deal here with the unfolding of this marvelous man and the heritage of his deeds and thought. He meditated long upon the unfortunate state of his people; he saw them bogged in ignorance and blinded by superstition, and hence he concluded that until there should be popular education, independence would mean only failure and temporary reversion. Of the eventual freedom of the Philippines, as of their eventual greatness and glory among men, he had never a doubt. Meantime, the first work in hand was to arouse these people to the need of education and to wrest from Spain by peaceful means some practical relief from the savage tyranny that weighed down their hearts, darkened their lives, and of purpose kept them in ignorance.