Part 10 (1/2)

It is, of course, a wild exaggeration. Pain and sickness are real things, and the empire of the mind over the body is very limited.

Still, there is an empire and it must never be forgotten. The healthy-minded--those who work, who live their lives, who love and hate, and fight, and win and lose, to whom the world is a great arena--will laugh at Mrs. Eddy. They need not this teaching which is half a truth and half a lie. They see the false half only because they need not the true half. And the others, the mental invalids, they see the true half and not the false. It is _all_ true to them, and it _must_ be all true to be of use, for power lies in the exaggeration, never in the mean.

This is the secret of ”Christian Science.” We have in our midst a terrible disease, growing daily worse, the disease of inutility, which breeds pessimism, and Mrs. Eddy's doctrine of the imaginary nature of evil is good for this pessimism. The sick seize it with avidity because they find it helps their symptoms, and in the relief it affords to their unhappiness they are willing to swallow all the rest of the formless mist that is offered to them as part of their religion.

I do not know that ”Christian Scientists” differ greatly from believers in other religions in this point. It is an excellent instance of how one useful tenet will cause the acceptance of a whole ma.s.s of absurdities and even make them seem real and true. Christian Science has come as the quack medicine to cure a disease that is a terrible reality, and it is of use because it contains in all its melange one ingredient, morphia, that dulls the pain. But the cure of this disease lies elsewhere than in Christian Science, than, indeed, in any religion.

I have given a chapter to this ”Science,” not because it appears to me that it is ever likely to become a real force or of real importance, but because it ill.u.s.trates, I think, the reason of the success or otherwise of all religions. It exhibits in exaggerated form what is the nature of all religions.

They come to fulfil an emotional want, or wants that are imperative and that call for relief. And they succeed and persist exactly as they minister to these emotional wants. The emotion that requires religion is always a pessimism of some form or other, a weariness, a hopelessness. And the religion is accepted because it combats that helplessness and gives a hope. All religions are optimisms to their believers.

A great deal of foolishness may be included in a faith without injury to its success. Doctrine, theory, scientific theology, may be as empty and meaningless as it is in Christian Science, and still the faith will live. And the central idea must be exaggerated. It must be so exaggerated that to outsiders it appears only an immense falsehood. It is so in all the religions. Truth lies in the mean, power in the extreme. They are opposed as are freewill and destination, as are G.o.d and Law.

CHAPTER XVIII.

PERSONALITY.

There is one complaint that all Europeans make of the Burmese. It matters not what the European's duties may be, what his profession, or his trade, or his calling--it is always the same, ”the Burmans will not stand discipline.” It is, says the European, fatal to him in almost all walks of life. For instance, the British Government tried at one time in Burma to raise Burmese regiments officered by Europeans, after the pattern of the Indian troops. There seemed at first no reason why it should not succeed. The Burmans are not cowards. Although not endowed with the fury of the Pathan or the bloodthirsty valour of the Ghurka, the Burman is brave. He will do many things none but brave men can do; kill panthers with sharpened sticks, for instance, and navigate the Irrawaddy in flood in canoes, with barely two inches free board. He is, in his natural state in the villages, unaccustomed to any strict discipline. But then, so are most people; and if the levies of the Burmese kings were but a mob, why, so are most native levies. There seemed _a priori_ no reason why Burmese troops should not be fairly useful. And the attempt was made. It failed.

And so, to a greater or less extent, all attempts to discipline the Burmans in any walk of life have always failed. Amongst the police--which must, of course, be composed of natives of the country--discipline, even the light discipline sought to be enforced, is always wanting. And good men will not join the force, mostly because they dislike to be ruled. In the mills in Rangoon labour has been imported from India. Not that the Burman is not a good workman--he is physically and mentally miles above the imported Telugu--but he will not stand discipline. It is the same on the railways and on the roads, and the private servants of almost all Europeans are Indian. The Burman will not stand control, daily control, daily order, the feeling of subjection and the infliction of punishment. Especially the infliction of punishment. He resents it, even when he knows and admits he deserves it.

Is, then, the Burman impatient of suffering? He is the most patient, the most cheerful of mortals. I who have seen districts ruined by famine, families broken up and dissolved, farms abandoned, cattle dying by the thousand, I know this. And in the famine camps, where tens of thousands lived and worked hard for a bare subsistence, was there any inability to bear up, any despondency, any despair? There was never any. Such an example of cheerfulness, of courage under great suffering, could not be surpa.s.sed. Yet if you fine your servant a few annas out of his good pay for a fault he will admit he made, he will bitterly resent it and probably leave you. It is Authority, Personality, that the Burmans object to. And the whole social life of the people, the whole of their religion, shows how deeply this distaste to Personal Authority enters into their lives.

There is no aristocracy in Burma. There has never been so. There has, it is true, always been a King--that was a necessity; and his authority, nominally absolute, was in fact very limited. But beside him there was no one. There were no lords of manors, no feudalism, no serf.a.ge of any kind. There was a kind of slavery, the idea of which probably came into Burma with the code of Manu, as a redemption of debt. At our conquest of Upper Burma it disappeared without a sign, but it was the lightest of its kind. The slave was a domestic servant at most, more usually a member of the family; the authority exercised over him or her was of the gentlest, for with the dislike to submit to personal authority there was an equally great dislike to exercising it. The intense desire for power and authority over others which is so distinguis.h.i.+ng a mark of western people does not obtain among the Burmese. It is one of our difficulties to make our subordinate Burmese magistrates and officers exercise sufficient authority in their charges. This dislike, both to exercising and submitting to authority, is instinctive and very strong.

In western nations, more especially the Latin nations, who made Christianity, it is the very reverse. There is in us both the desire and ability to govern and the power to submit readily to those who are above us. We rejoice in aristocracies, whether of the Government or of the Church. We organise all our inst.i.tutions upon that basis. We have a rigid Government, such as no Orientals have dreamt of, least of all the Burmese. We revere rank instinctively. We like to have masters. Personal submissiveness is in our eyes an excellent quality. We know that to declare a man to be a faithful servant is a great praise. In our lives as in our religions, lord and servant express a continued relations.h.i.+p.

And from this quality, this instinct of discipline, this innate power both of governing and submitting to governance, come the forms of government and our success in trade and in many other matters.

It would, however, be quite outside the point of this chapter to discuss all the results of these differences and their effect for good and bad.

To the European the Burman, with his distaste for authority, appears to be unfitted for the greater successes of life. To the Burman the European's desire for authority appears to result in the slavery of the many to the few, in the loss of individual liberty and the contraction of happiness. Either or both, or neither, may be true. It is here immaterial, for all I wish to point out and to emphasise is that whereas the Burman, who is a Buddhist, dislikes all personal authority instinctively, the western Christians, more especially the Latin peoples, on the contrary crave after it. The Burman's ideal is to be independent of everyone, even if poor, to have no one over him and no one under him, to live among his equals. But in western countries the tendency is all to divide the world into two cla.s.ses, master and man, to organise--which means, of course, authority and submission--and to make obedience one of the greatest of virtues.

Now consider their faiths. The Christian has a personal G.o.d. He owes to that G.o.d unquestioning obedience and submission. Man may praise G.o.d and thank Him, but not do the reverse. Man owes to G.o.d reverence, one of the greatest of the virtues. And the Churches are all organised in the same way. The authority of G.o.d becomes the authority of the Pope, the Tsar, the Bishops, the priests. The amount of submission and reverence due to the priests of Christianity may vary in different countries, but it is always there, and the reverence due to G.o.d never alters.

Do you think such a system of religion would be bearable to a Burman? To him neither reverence nor submission to Personality, whether G.o.d or priest or master, is an instinctive beauty. He acknowledges neither G.o.d nor priest, and he avoids masters as much as possible. His nature does not lead him to it. He revolts against Personality. Courage under the inevitable he has to the greatest extent. If he suffer as the result of a law he has nothing but cheerful acceptance, even if he do not understand it. If he can see his suffering to be the result of his own mistakes he will bear it with resignation, and note that in future he should be more careful. But that he should be _punished_, that rouses in him resentment, revolt. He would cry to G.o.d, Why do you hurt me? You need not if you do not like; You are all-powerful. Cannot you manage otherwise than by causing so much pain to me and all the world? There are other feelings caused by a Personality, many other feelings than that of submission. There is defiance, bitterness. Did not Ajax defy the lightning? If a man or a boy looking at the world discovers in it more misery than happiness, more injustice than justice, of what sort will be his feelings to the Author of it all?

I fear that if the Burman accepted a Personal All-powerful G.o.d and then looked at the state of the world, his att.i.tude towards that Personality would not be all admiration and reverence. Indeed, they have often told me so.

But before Law, before Necessity. You cannot revolt against the inevitable. Pa.s.sion is useless. The suffering which would be resented from a Personality is borne with courage as an inevitable result. You may be of good courage and say, ”It is my fault, my ignorance; I will learn not to put my hands in the fire and so not be burnt.” But if you suppose a G.o.d burnt you without telling you why, without giving you a chance, what then? Is this hard to understand? I do not know, but to me it is not so. For I can remember a boy, who was much as these Burmans are, who found authority hard to bear, punishment very difficult to accept; who remembered always that the punishment might have been omitted, who thought it was often mistaken and vindictive. For if you are almost always ill, and find for days and weeks and months that very little mental exertion is as much as you are capable of, how much do you accept the justice of being called ”idle,” ”lazy,” ”indolent,” and being kept in to waste what little mental strength you have left in writing meaningless impositions? There is more. It is a Christian teaching, a lesson that is frequently enforced in children, that all their acts are watched by G.o.d. ”He sees me now.” ”G.o.d is watching me.” How often are not these written in large words on nursery walls? And do you think that there are not some natures who revolt from this? To be watched--always watched. Cannot you imagine the intense oppression, the irritation and revulsion, such a doctrine may occasion? ”Cannot I be left alone?” And when he learns that there is another belief--that he is not being watched, that he is not a child in a nursery, but a man acting under laws he can learn--cannot you imagine the endless relief, the joy as of emanc.i.p.ation from a prison? That it is so to many people I know, the feeling that law means freedom, but I also know that to others it is not. ”Law, this rigid law,” said the French missionary priest with a sigh when we were discussing the matter, ”it makes me shudder. It seems to me like an iron chain, like a terrible destiny binding us in. Ah, I never could believe that. But a G.o.d who watches over us, who protects us, who is our Father, that is to me true and beautiful. Who will help you if not G.o.d? Under Law you must face the world alone. No!” and he shuddered, ”let us not think of it. I cannot abide the idea.” And how many are like him?

Do you think that such feelings can be changed? Do you think that he who thinks Law to be freedom will ever be argued or converted into Theism?

It can never be. Such beliefs are innate, they are instincts far beyond reason or discussion, to be understood only by those who have felt them.

There is the instinct for G.o.d which rules almost all the West and India.

There is the instinct against G.o.d and for Law which rules the far East.

You cannot get away from either, you cannot prove either or disprove it.

They are instincts, and they influence not only the religious beliefs but the whole lives of the peoples.

It is easy to see how in Europe the instinct for Personality has influenced all history. In moderation its effects have been all for good; it binds people into nations, it enables the weaker and more ignorant to accept willingly the leaders.h.i.+p of the better. It has manifested itself with us even to-day in the respect and reverence and affection we have all felt for our Queen, who has so lately left us. And in its excess it has been wholly evil. It has led us to irresponsible monarchs, to the terrible tyranny of the French aristocracy, that required the whirlwind of a Revolution to efface. In the blind wors.h.i.+p for Napoleon in his later days it drove the nation to terrible suffering. This desire for Personality has writ its effects large upon the history of the West, more especially in Latin nations.