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?