resort to Cuba's example and not to political petitions only. [130] Even in Noli me tangere, first published under his own eye at Berlin in 1887, when Rizal, at the age of twenty-six, was just fairly setting out in life, there are many evidences that the author, if he meant primarily to set before the world the backwardness of the existing social and political régime in the Philippines, its stifling of thought, and its many tyrannies, had also in mind to set before his people, in some of his instantaneous photographs of Philippine life, their own defects. In El filibusterismo (Ghent, 1891), the more mature reformer preached yet more plainly the necessity of social and political progress beginning from below, and not simply inspired from above. That his people took the lessons meant for themselves (and take them still today) less to heart than they responded to the satire and invective directed against the form of rule imposed upon them, was the fault not of Rizal but of human nature, prone to apply the preacher's words only to the other fellow. It is a great misfortune that we have in English no real translation of Noli me tangere, [131] and none at all of El filibusterismo, which, as a political document, is the stronger of the two. [132] It is no less regrettable that no biography of Rizal, tracing his mental development and his relation with the events of 1880 to 1896, nor even a good biographical sketch of him, has been published in the English language. Retana's biographical and bibliographical notes, published in a Madrid monthly, Nuestro Tiempo, 1904-06, and about to appear in book form, are indispensable as the only comprehensive work on the subject, and resort must be had to them for a full array of citations, as also for many documents not available elsewhere. [133] Rizal's edition (Paris, 1890) of Morga's Sucesos de las islas Filipinas has already been cited in connection with that work in VOLS. XV and XVI of this series (see note 3 of former). Its annotations are Rizal's chief contribution to the history of his people, and it must be said that his political feeling has crept into them to the damage often of their scientific value. [134] There also deserve mention here Rizal's discussion in 1889 of the future of his people, [135] and some of Blumentritt's writings about Rizal and in his defense. [136]