And in the increased civilisation we feel less the need of a teaching of gentleness; our nature is no longer too coarse; it may be it is going the other way, that the softening process is going too far, and that our need is a new savagery. And above all we hate exaggeration. To minds capable of thought, of reason, and of culture, exaggeration on one side is no excuse for exaggeration on the other. We are changing from the older men who required enthusiasms to drive them and violent exaggerations to cause them to move. We like exactitude.
These codes were made for rougher days than ours. They were true then. They are not true now—not true, at least, to the more thoughtful. But that they were true once, that the world owes to them its rescue from the exaggeration of the passions, we must never forget. They were truths while opposed. When opposed no longer they become false and fall. An exaggeration can only be useful as long as it is not perceived to be so. Set up two beams against each other, they are savagery and the purist codes. While one stands so does the other, and they make an equilibrium. But take away one and straightway the other must fall too. One cannot stand alone.
CHAPTER XVII.
MIND AND BODY.
"I have been lent your book 'The Soul of a People,'" said a lady to me, "but I have only had time so far to read the dedication. Do you know what I exclaimed?"
"I cannot even guess," I replied.
"I said, 'How very scientific.' Do you know what I meant?"
As my dedication is to the Burmese people, and only says I have tried always to see their virtues and forget their faults, as a friend should, I was quite unable to see where the science came in, and I said so.