IT is well-known that José Rizal was, unavoidably, an avid reader. He explains in some of his letters how he preferred to spend his money on books rather than food. His curiosity was more typical of an humanist from Renaissance times that of a middle-class man from 19th-century Calamba. There was no topic that was of no interest for him: ancient languages, medicine, anthropology, history, religion, etc. His mind was in a permanent state of effervescence, always willing to be fed with new intellectual stimuli.