Then, when the longing for peace has come, he will go to the straight way and find it; no man will remain in the forest for ever. He will learn. When he is very, very weary, when his feet are full of thorns, and his back scarred with the lashes of Time—great, kindly Time, the schoolmaster of the world—he will learn.
Not till he has learnt will he desire to enter into the straight road.
But in the end all men will come. We at the last shall all meet together where Time and Life shall be no more.
This is a Burman allegory of Buddhism. It was told me long ago. I trust I have not spoilt it in the retelling.
CHAPTER XXV
CONCLUSION
This is the end of my book. I have tried always as I wrote to remember the principles that I laid down for myself in the first chapter. Whether I have always done so I cannot say. It is so difficult, so very difficult, to understand a people—any people—to separate their beliefs from their assents, to discover the motives of their deeds, that I fear I must often have failed.
My book is short. It would have been easy to make a book out of each chapter, to write volumes on each great subject that I have touched on; but I have not done so—I have always been as brief as I could.