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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 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?

CHAPTER XIX
GOD THE SACRIFICE

It is Sunday to-day in the little Italian town, and they have been holding a procession. I do not know quite what was the reason of the procession; it is the feast day of the patron of the Church, and it is connected in some way with him, but quite how no one could tell me. It was the custom, and that sufficed. It was not a very grand procession, for the town is small, but there was the town band playing at the head, and there were girls in twos singing and priests, also in pairs, singing, and there were banners and a crucifix. This last was just like any other crucifix you may see; there was the pale body of Christ upon the cross, with His wounds red with blood, there was the tinsel crown over the head, there was upon the face the look of suffering. It was like any other crucifix in a Catholic country, not a work of art at all. It was gruesome, and to the unbeliever repulsive and unpleasant. But all the people uncovered as it passed, and many looked to it with reverence and worship.

But indeed Catholic countries are full of such crucifixes. They are upon the hills, they are beside the roadsides, they are in all the churches, they are in every Catholic household, there is very often one worn upon the person.

Throughout Italy, throughout all Catholic countries, there are only two representations of Christ – as a babe with the Virgin Mary and crucified upon the cross. It was in Italy that Western Christianity arose and grew, it was in Italy that it became a living power, it was in Italy that it acquired consistency, that it was bound together by dogmas and crystallised in creeds. And still, after nineteen hundred years, it is Italy that remains the centre of the Christian world. There is no Christian church so great, so venerable, so imposing as the Church of Rome. It lasts unchanged amid the cataclasms of worlds. And this people whose genius made Christianity, whose genius still rules the greater part of it, what are their conceptions of Christ? What part of His life is it that has caught their reverence and adoration, what side is it of His character that appeals to them, what is the emotion that the name of Christ awakens in these believers?

Of the Virgin Mary and the infant Christ I have written in another chapter. It is of the crucifix I wish to write here. Why is it that of the life of Christ this end of His is considered the most worthy to be in continual remembrance?

I confess that when I climb the hill and see the dead Christs upon their crosses shining white against the olive gardens, when I see His agony depicted in the churches, when I see the people gaze upon Him sacrificed, my memory is taken back to other scenes.

There is a scene that I can remember in a village far away against the frontier in our farthest East. It was a little village that was once a city, but decayed; it was walled with huge walls of brick, but they are fallen into mounds; it had gateways, but they are now but gaps; and a few huts are huddled in a corner where once a palace stood.

It is the custom in this village that every year at a certain season white cocks are to be sacrificed at the gates. There is as may be some legend to explain the custom, but it is forgotten. And yet are the cocks sacrificed each year.

There is the memory, too, of the goat I saw killed in India years ago as I have described. And there are other memories – memories of what I have seen, of what I have read. For this ceremony of sacrifice is the very oldest of all the beginnings of religion. It is akin to prayer, it is at the root of all faiths; we can go no further back than sacrifice. Where it began religion had commenced. Far older than any creed, arising from the dumb instincts of human kind, it is one of the roots of faiths.

Therefore, when I see this image of God, the Son sacrificed to God the Father, I seem to behold the highest development of this long story. Sacrifice, it has always been sacrifice. It has been small animals – goats and fowls and pigeons; it has been greater and more valuable beasts – cattle and horses. It has been man. How often indeed has it been man: Abraham leading Isaac to the sacrifice, the Aztecs sacrificing in Mexico, the Druids in Britain, the followers of Odin, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the early Hindus, can you find a faith that has not sacrificed? Sometimes it has been single victims, sometimes hecatombs of slaughtered slaves. It has been sacrifice by priests, it has been self-sacrifice, as Curtius or as those who threw themselves before the car of Juggernauth. Everywhere there has been sacrifice; it is one of the roots of faiths, it arouses the emotion that has helped to make all religions. And in Christianity it has reached its zenith, for it is no longer an animal, no longer even a man – it is a God, the Son of God who is self-sacrificed to God. In what manner this awakens the emotions of man the following extract will show. It is from "The Gospel of the Atonement," by the Venerable J. Wilson.

"The law that suffering is divine, [Greek: to kalon pathein], is verified in the experience of the soul. Now Christ's death is the supreme instance of that law. The power of Gethsemane and Calvary, in the light of such a law, needs no explanation. They open the heart as nothing else ever did. We know that whatever reservations we make for ourselves, whatever our own shrinking from utter self-sacrifice, Christ, living in perfect accordance with the laws of spiritual health and perfection, could not do other than die. Thus without any thought of payment or expiation, with no vestige of separation of the Son from the Father, we see that the death on the Cross demonstrated that the human and divine know but one and the same law of life and being. Thus it is that the death of Christ, the shedding of His blood, has been, and ever will be, regarded by theologians, as well as by the simple believers, as the way of the atonement. Via crucis via salutis."

The scientific theologians tell me when I ask that this parade of the sacrifice of Christ is to recall to men how much they should love Christ. That He so loved them that He gave Himself a victim for their salvation. The crucifix, the incessant preaching of the death of Christ, the sacrament of the Communion, is to cause us to love Him as to do what He taught us. That it does have some such effect no one can doubt – on Latin people. But on others?

To some it seems that if you try to reason at all about it, the emotion awakened might be, nay should be, otherwise. In those not instinct with one emotion the first impression awakened is disgust at the parade of death and blood; the second, horror at the God who could demand such a sacrifice, who could not be pacified but by the execution in circumstances of shame of His own Son. They shrink from it. It is no matter of reason. Do you think one who felt so could be argued out of his horror or a Christian out of his devotion? They are instinctive feelings which nothing will change. And yet in a very small way even the Buddhist has the instinct of sacrifice. For I remember that when the fowls were killed inside the city gate and their blood ran upon the ground the people looked just as these Italian people looked. The emotion was the same in kind, and it was not either love for the fowls or wonder at the demand of the spirits that moved them. And so when the slaves were sacrificed beneath the oaks, was it gratitude to the slaves that was evoked? And in the self-sacrifice at the car of Juggernauth? It may be sometimes that gratitude may be added, but this is not the root emotion. The instinct of sacrifice has its roots much deeper than this, quite apart from this; and, with perhaps only one exception – Buddhism – all religions have practised it. Christianity performs no more sacrifices now, but all its churches, in all their varieties weekly at the great sacrament of the Communion, commemorate – nay, it is claimed in a measure recreate – this sacrifice of the Son to the Father. Sacrifice is of the very root of this religion. It is far older than any creed. The Jews knew of sacrifice two thousand years before the day of Christ, the Celts sacrificed slaves ages before that.

But it may be said these crosses, these crucifixes, are peculiar to Catholic countries. You do not see them in North Germany, in England, in America. Teutonic nations do not parade this sacrifice. No, they do not, for it does not appeal to them so much as to the nations of Southern Europe. Sacrifice was not unknown to the Teutons and the Northern people, but it never reached the height it did further South. It has been the Latin peoples who in this as in other matters went to extremes. It was the Greeks who sacrificed Iphigenia, who had the festival of the Thargalia; it was Rome which produced Curtius and others who sacrificed themselves. It was the Romans who sacrificed thousands in the Coliseum. It is in the tumuli of Celtic peoples where we find the cloven skulls of slaves.

Sacrifice has appealed always more to the Latin then and now; and therefore you see the crucifix in Latin countries, but not with us. Still, we are not free from the emotion. We have the sacrament of Communion; the Atonement appeals to us also. The passions that are strong in the Latin peoples are weak with us, yet they exist. The instincts are the same. When executions were public our people thronged to see them. Death has always a peculiar attraction, quite apart from any idea connected with it. It is such a wonderful thing the taking of life, so awe-inspiring, that it has appealed always to men; especially in the west.

In the East that has accepted Buddhism, especially in Burma, it is much less so. They have, it is true, the usual pleasure and curiosity in seeing blood and death. And occasionally you come across some petty sacrifice like that of the fowls mentioned above; but the instinct is comparatively weak. It has never, even before they were Buddhists, been general, and never extended even to cattle. The sacrifice of a man (remember, I say sacrifice, not execution), would be absolutely abhorrent to them, how much more so that of a God? They have not the instinctive recognition of any beauty in it. Therefore, for this amongst other reasons, the Burmese reject Christianity.

But to the Western instinct this sacrifice and this atonement is wonderful and beautiful. It appeals to us. The old instinct is satisfied.

Therefore, amongst other reasons, Christians cling to the Atonement, and to make that sacrifice the greatest possible it must be the sacrifice of God, and as God can only be sacrificed to God the Christian God must be a multiple one. To postulate as the Mahommedan does, God is God, would destroy the depth of the Atonement. Hence arises the creed, the attempt to reconcile two opposed instincts. There is one God – that is an instinct, arising from our generalising power; there must be at least two Gods to explain the Atonement, and so we have the Father and the Son.

For of the three Godheads only these two are real to most people. There is God the Ruler, the Maker of the world, and there is Christ. These are both very real to all Christians. They are prayed to individually, they are worshipped separately, they are clear conceptions. But is there any clear conception of the Holy Ghost as a distinct personality? Is He ever cited separately from the others? Has He any special characteristics? There are, for instance, many pictures of God, and many more of Christ – are there any of the Holy Ghost? This Third Person of the Trinity appeals to no instinct, and is only an abstraction in popular thought. When the Creed was framed it was necessary to include the Holy Ghost because He is mentioned in the New Testament. He has remained an abstraction only. But the other two Godheads are realities, because they appeal to feelings that are innate. They are the explanation of these feelings.

Thus do creeds arise out of instincts. It is never the reverse. Postulate God the Father as All-Powerful, All-Merciful, and see if by any possibility you can work out the Atonement or see any beauty in it. Can anyone see aught but horror in this Almighty demanding the sacrifice of His Son? You cannot. But granted that Atonement and sacrifice have to you an innate beauty of their own, and the dogma of a multiple Godhead easily follows. There are creeds built on ceremonies, and ceremonies upon instincts: ceremonies are never deduced from creeds.