About this process is always something more potent and salutary than can be easily explained. It is the elusive, indomitable spirit of that pitiless publicity, at once the armed champion of modern social progress, the healer of its diseases, and the corrector of its errors. Suppose the social malefactor to know full well, as well as he knows anything, that when he reads in print the story of his misdeeds not one hundred other persons are likely to see it; he is shaken with ineffable alarm, nevertheless. The magic of the printed page overwhelms and confounds him; in his ear every type-letter is a separate demon yelling “Scoundrel!” Suppose him to have known theretofore that one hundred thousand men were saying among themselves this that he now reads in print; the knowledge would have disturbed him not to the quiver of an eyelash. But to have it thus in visible record, open to the world’s eye—intolerable! Many a man case-hardened otherwise to conscience or reproof has fled to suicide before that unwavering finger and relentless condemnation. The life of all this is truth. Against printed words that are not true even the guilty can make a stand, but it is invincible verity that leaves him naked and trembling. When the first cold shiver had gone by of the discovery that some one had at last dared to put into print the horror of the Philippines, one cry for vengeance went up from the stripped and shamed exploiters. It was a cry like the angry snarl of hurt hyenas, ready to tear into pieces whomsoever should fall into their den. Presently there came among them the very man of their desire, the author of all this, the object of all their furious hatred; unsuspectingly he walked into their jungle. When he had finished his book Rizal felt free to make the excursion Viola had proposed. They tramped together through remote Germany and saw something of Switzerland and of Austria. Rizal, as he went, studied peasant life, and diligently he compared it with the conditions of the Philippine farmers. At the end of the tour, he went to Dresden. There he found that by reputation he was already known to Dr. A. B. Meyer and other scientists, most of whom speedily became his friends. [89]