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
surpassed. 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 serfage 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 distinguishing 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 institutions 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 relationship.
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 classes, 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 God. He owes to
that God unquestioning obedience and submission. Man may praise God and
thank Him, but not do the reverse. Man owes to God reverence, one of the
greatest of the virtues. And the Churches are all organised in the same
way. The authority of God 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 God 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 God or
priest or master, is an instinctive beauty. He acknowledges neither God
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 God, 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 God and then
looked at the state of the world, his attitude 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. Passion 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 God 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 God. "He sees me now." "God 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
emancipation 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 God who watches over us, who protects
us, who is our Father, that is to me true and beautiful. Who will help
you if not God? 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 God which rules almost all the West and India.
There is the instinct against God 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 leadership 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 worship
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.
And in Burma the want of this instinct is also written deeply in the
history. There has been with them no enthusiasm for persons, no
idealisation of individuals. There is no inborn desire for rulers and
masters, for obedience and submission.
The effect of the instinct is writ largely in their history. They have
no aristocracy, they have no feudality, there are neither masters nor
men. They cannot organise or combine. The central Government was
incredibly weak. There is nothing that strikes the Burman with such
surprise as the unvaried obedience of all officials to a faraway
government. But I am now concerned with effects, only causes. I have
wished to show why a Burman believes in Law and not in God, that it
arises from an instinct against overpowering Personality, an innate
dislike to the idea. It is never to him Truth. It makes him unhappy even
to hear of it. He could never accept it as a truth, for truth is that
which is in accord with our hearts.
Yet the Burman whose ideal is Law is not quite without the instinct of
Personality. He also prays sometimes, and you cannot pray to nothing.
Far down in his heart there is also the same instinct that rules the
West, but it is weak. It finds its vent now and then despite his faith.
And in the West the idea of Law is rising. It is new, but not less true
for that. It rises steadily hand in hand with science, and it, too, will
find its vent despite the faith.
When the scientific theologian declares that God is not variable, that
He has no passions, no anger, no vengeance, that He is bound by
immovable righteousness and is not affected by prayer, cannot you see
the idea of Law? No one would have said this a hundred years ago. It is
growing in him; it is there, even if he do not recognise it as such, and
sore havoc it makes with the old theologies.
The instinct of generalisation made many gods into one God; the instinct
of atonement obliged the sub-division of God; to be explained only by
an incomprehensible formula. And now there is arising a third
instinct--that of Law. It is weak yet, but it is there. When it becomes
stronger either Personality must disappear or else a still more
incomprehensible creed must be formulated to reconcile the three ideas.
But what is truth? Are they all true?