Part 22 (2/2)

The star grew nearer and nearer, the light grew greater and greater, the false lights died behind them, until at last they came out of the forest, and there they found the lake that washes away all desire under the sun of Truth.

They had won their way. Time and Life and Fight and Struggle were behind them, could not follow them, as they came, weary and footsore, into the Great Peace.

And of those who were left behind, of those who stayed in the glades to gather the deadly flowers, to be driven ever forward by the whip of Time--what of them? Surely they will learn. The kindly whip of Time is behind: he will never let them rest in such a deadly forest; they must go ever forward; and as they go they grow more and more weary, the glades are more and more distasteful, the heavy-scented blossoms more and more repulsive. They will find out the thorns too. At first they forgot the thorns in the flowers. 'The blossoms are beautiful,' they said; 'what care we for the thorns? Nay, the thorns are good. It is a pleasure to fight with them. What would the forest be without its thorns? If we could gather the flowers and find no thorns, we should not care for them. The more the thorns, the more valuable the blossoms.'

So they said, and they gathered the blossoms, and they faded. But the thorns did not fade; they were ever there. The more blossoms a man had gathered, the more thorns he had to wear, and Time was ever behind him.

They wanted to rest in the glades, but Time willed that ever they must go forward; no going back, no rest, ever and ever on. So they grew very weary.

'These flowers,' they said at last, 'are always the same. We are tired of them; their smell is heavy; they are dead. This forest is full of thorns only. How shall we escape from it? Ever as we go round and round we hate the flowers more, we feel the thorns more acutely. We must escape! We are sick of Time and his whip, our feet are very, very weary, our eyes are dazzled and dim. We, too, would seek the Peace. We laughed at those before who went along the rocky path; we did not want peace; but now it seems to us the most beautiful thing in the world. Will Time never cease to drive us on and on? Will these lights _never_ cease to flash to and fro?'

Each man at last will turn to the straight road. He will find out. Every man will find out at last that the forest is hateful, that the flowers are deadly, that the thorns are terrible; every man will learn to fear Time.

Then, when the longing for peace has come, he will go to the straight way and find it; no man will remain in the forest for ever. He will learn. When he is very, very weary, when his feet are full of thorns, and his back scarred with the lashes of Time--great, kindly Time, the schoolmaster of the world--he will learn.

Not till he has learnt will he desire to enter into the straight road.

But in the end all men will come. We at the last shall all meet together where Time and Life shall be no more.

This is a Burman allegory of Buddhism. It was told me long ago. I trust I have not spoilt it in the retelling.

CHAPTER XXV

CONCLUSION

This is the end of my book. I have tried always as I wrote to remember the principles that I laid down for myself in the first chapter. Whether I have always done so I cannot say. It is so difficult, so very difficult, to understand a people--any people--to separate their beliefs from their a.s.sents, to discover the motives of their deeds, that I fear I must often have failed.

My book is short. It would have been easy to make a book out of each chapter, to write volumes on each great subject that I have touched on; but I have not done so--I have always been as brief as I could.

I have tried always to ill.u.s.trate only the central thought, and not the innumerable divergencies, because only so can a great or strange thought be made clear. Later, when the thought is known, then it is easy to stray into the byways of thought, always remembering that they are byways, wandering from a great centre.

For the Burman's life and belief is one great whole.

I thought before I began to write, and I have become more and more certain of it as I have taken up subject after subject, that to all the great differences of thought between them and us there is one key. And this key is that they believe the world is governed by eternal laws, that have never changed, that will never change, that are founded on absolute righteousness; while we believe in a personal G.o.d, altering laws, and changing moralities according to His will.

If I were to rewrite this book, I should do so from this standpoint of eternal laws, making the book an ill.u.s.tration of the proposition.

Perhaps it is better as it is, in that I have discovered the key at the end of my work instead of at the beginning. I did not write the book to prove the proposition, but in writing the book this truth has become apparent to me.

The more I have written, the clearer has this teaching become to me, until now I wonder that I did not understand long ago--nay, that it has not always been apparent to all men.

Surely it is the beginning of all wisdom.

Not until we had discarded Atlas and subst.i.tuted gravity, until we had forgotten Enceladus and learned the laws of heat, until we had rejected Thor and his hammer and searched after the laws of electricity, could science make any strides onward.

An irresponsible spirit playing with the world as his toy killed all science.

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