Students have a habit of peeking at the spines of books on a teacher?s desk, in her bag, or under his arm, in a vain effort to guess what kind of person he or she is. They think, with reason, that what a teacher reads will come up in classroom lectures and possibly examinations. One day, a curious student asked why I was carrying an odd volume from the complete works of Sigmund Freud. The first psycho-biography was written by Freud in 1910 and his subject was Leonardo da Vinci. Unfortunately, few people read this essay, because it is quite insightful and says much more than simply determining Leonardo?s sexual orientation (read: homosexual) from his early years and his relationship with his mother. One of the earliest psycho-biographies in the Philippines was undertaken by the Yugoslavian Rizalist Ante Radaic whose ?Rizal Adentro? (?Rizal from Within?) argues that the National Hero evolved from insecurity and a massive inferiority complex resulting from his height. Unfortunately for all the vertically challenged in the Philippines, Radaic did not write more, having committed suicide by jumping off the University of Santo Tomas main building. Can the clues to greatness be hidden in our childhood? The study texts remain in the few autobiographies available. Manuel Quezon begins:

?From the lips of my mother I learned that I was born in Baler, on August 19, 1878, at seven o?clock in the morning. Since no Filipino resident of Baler at the time had a watch?for they were all too poor to own even the cheapest kind?I asked her how she knew that it was seven o?clock in the morning. ?They were ringing the church bells for the first time,? she answered. I understood. The 19th of August was the town fiesta of Baler, the feast day of the patron saint, and it was both a civic and religious holiday. Under the old Spanish regime, on such occasions, there was a high Mass at eight o?clock in the morning and before the Mass started they rang the church bells three times?the first at seven, the second at seven-thirty, and the third at eight, just at that moment when the priest started from the sacristy to the altar.

?My mother, who was a very devout Catholic, added: ?My boy, nothing happens in this world by accident. Everything answers a divine purpose. I believe that the fact that you were born on the day of our patron saint is indicative of God?s will that you will follow the vocation of the priesthood.?

?On the other hand, my father who had been a sergeant in one of the regiments of the Spanish Army insisted that I should be a soldier. As a boy he dressed me in the uniform of a Cabo de la Guardia Civil or Corporal of the Civil Guard.?

Both parents were wrong in their predictions. If you want to read the rest of this fascinating autobiography, it?s entitled The Good Fight, first published in New York in 1946 with an introduction by Douglas MacArthur. You can also contrast this with the autobiography of his political rival Emilio Aguinaldo, whose ?Mga Gunita ng Himagsikan? was translated from the original Tagalog and published in 1967 as ?Memoirs of the Revolution.? Aguinaldo has been painted by history as the power-hungry murderer who disposed of his rivals Andres Bonifacio and Antonio Luna, yet his memoirs begin in this charming way:

?According to my solicitous and loving mother, I was born at daybreak of Holy Monday, March 22, 1869, in the town of Cavite el Viejo, now Kawit, Cavite. For three days, from the Friday before Holy Week through Monday, my mother suffered unbearable labor pains which she never experienced in giving birth to her other seven children. The attending midwife and her assistants could not ease her pains. They were just ready to give up when my father thought of a most extraordinary plan to save my mother. Surreptitiously, he went downstairs to light a berso (giant firecracker). The sudden loud explosion startled my mother, and without much ado, I saw the light of day. Meanwhile from shock and exhaustion my mother lay helpless and unconscious.

?When I was baptized, my father chose the name Emilio because he did not like the more ostentatious names like Deogracias or Bienvenido (names found in the calendar for March 22). He scanned all the names for all the months and he was attracted to the name Emilio. San Emilio is a Martyr of the Catholic faith who was born on May 28. This probably explains why from childhood, my life had always been fraught with hardships and sadness. I had real happiness in life only in few instances.

?I was told that when I was young I was very meek and shy?traits that I possessed until I grew up in manhood, especially because our parents repeatedly taught us to be kind always. Among my brothers and my sister, I am said to be the most loved by my father, maybe because I was the youngest among the boys and the ugliest among them.?

What would our history be if these two men had different mothers and were raised in a different way? Would history change?at least in terms of numerology?if Emilio Aguinaldo was called Deogracias (Thanks be to God) or Bienvenido (Welcome)? What?s in a name? Quite a lot when you realize that Adolf Hitler was illegitimate and for the first 39 years of his life carried his mother?s maiden name Schicklgruber. Our history will benefit from taking a look at the childhood of our heroes.

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Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu.