At twenty Rizal finished his course at Manila, and a few months later went to Madrid, where he speedily won the degrees of Ph.D. and M.D.; then to Germany--taking here another degree, doing his work in the new language, which he mastered as he went along; to Austria, where he gained great skill as an oculist; to France, Italy, England--absorbing the languages and literature of these countries, doing some fine sculpture by way of diversion. But in all this he was single-minded; he never lost the voice of his call; he felt more and more keenly the contrast between the hard lot of his country and the freedom of these lands, and he bore it ill that no one of them even knew about her, and the cancer eating away her beauty and strength. At the end of this period of study he settled in Berlin, and began his active work for his country.
Four years of the socialism and license of the universities had not distorted Rizal's political vision; he remained, as he had grown up, an opportunist. Not then, nor at any time, did he think his country ready for self-government. He saw as her best present good her continued union to Spain, "through a stable policy based upon justice and community of interests." He asked only for the reforms promised again and again by the ministry, and as often frustrated. To plead for the lifting of the hand of oppression from the necks of his people, he now wrote his first novel, "Noli Me Tangere."
The next year he returned to the Philippines to find himself the idol of the natives and a thorn in the flesh of friars and greedy officials. The reading of his book was proscribed. He stayed long enough to concern himself in a dispute of his townspeople with the Dominicans over titles to lands; then finding his efforts vain and his safety doubtful, he left for Japan. Here he pursued for some time his usual studies; came thence to America, and then crossed to England, where he made researches in the British Museum, and edited in Spanish, "Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas," by Dr. Antonio de Morga, an important work, neglected by the Spaniards, but already edited in English by Dean Stanley.
After publishing this work, in Paris, Rizal returned to Spain, where, in 1890, he began a series of brilliant pleas for the Philippines, in the Solidaridad, a liberal journal published at Barcelona and afterward at Madrid. But he roused little sympathy or interest in Spain, and his articles, repeated in pamphlets in the Philippines, served to make his position more dangerous at home.