Only to-day, as I was walking up the bank of the river in the early dawn, I heard some Burman boatmen discussing my fox-terrier. They were about fifteen yards from the shore, poling their boat up against the current, which is arduous work; and as I passed them my little dog ran down the bank and looked at them across the water, and they saw her.
'See now,' said one man to another, pausing for a moment with his pole in his hand—'see the little white dog with the brown face, how wise she looks!'
'And how pretty!' said a man steering in the stern. 'Come!' he cried, holding out his hand to it.
But the dog only made a splash in the water with her paws, and then turned and ran after me. The boatmen laughed and resumed their poling, and I passed on. In the still morning across the still water I could hear every word, but I hardly took any note; I have heard it so often. Only now when I come to write on this subject do I remember.
It has been inculcated in us from childhood that it is a manly thing to be indifferent to pain—not to our own pain only, but to that of all others. To be sorry for a hunted hare, to compassionate the wounded deer, to shrink from torturing the brute creation, has been accounted by us as namby-pamby sentimentalism, not fit for man, fit only for a squeamish woman. To the Burman it is one of the highest of all virtues. He believes that all that is beautiful in life is founded on compassion and kindness and sympathy—that nothing of great value can exist without them. Do you think that a Burmese boy would be allowed to birds'-nest, or worry rats with a terrier, or go ferreting? Not so. These would be crimes.
That this kindness and compassion for animals has very far-reaching results no one can doubt. If you are kind to animals, you will be kind, too, to your fellow-man. It is really the same thing, the same feeling in both cases. If to be superior in position to an animal justifies you in torturing it, so it would do with men. If you are in a better position than another man, richer, stronger, higher in rank, that would—that does often in our minds—justify ill-treatment and contempt. Our innate feeling towards all that we consider inferior to ourselves is scorn; the Burman's is compassion. You can see this spirit coming out in every action of their daily life, in their dealings with each other, in their thoughts, in their speech. 'You are so strong, have you no compassion for him who is weak, who is tempted, who has fallen?' How often have I heard this from a Burman's lips! How often have I seen him act up to it! It seems to them the necessary corollary of strength that the strong man should be sympathetic and kind. It seems to them an unconscious confession of weakness to be scornful, revengeful, inconsiderate. Courtesy, they say, is the mark of a great man, discourtesy of a little one. No one who feels his position secure will lose his temper, will persecute, will be disdainful. Their word for a fool and for a hasty-tempered man is the same. To them it is the same thing, one infers the other. And so their attitude towards animals is but an example of their attitude to each other. That an animal or a man should be lower and weaker than you is the strongest claim he can have on your humanity, and your courtesy and consideration for him is the clearest proof of your own superiority. And so in his dealings with animals the Buddhist considers himself, consults his own dignity, his own strength, and is kind and compassionate to them out of the greatness of his own heart. Nothing is more beautiful than the Burman in his ways with his children, and his beasts, with all who are lesser than himself.
Even to us, who think so very differently from him on many points, there is a great and abiding charm in all this, to which we can find only one exception; for to our ideas there is one exception, and it is this: No Burman will take any life if he can help it, and therefore, if any animal injure itself, he will not kill it—not even to put it out of its pain, as we say. I have seen bullocks split on slippery roads, I have seen ponies with broken legs, I have seen goats with terrible wounds caused by accidental falls, and no one would kill them. If, when you are out shooting, your beaters pick up a wounded hare or partridge, do not suppose that they wring its neck; you must yourself do that, or it will linger on till you get home. Under no circumstances will they take the life even of a wounded beast. And if you ask them, they will say: 'If a man be sick, do you shoot him? If he injure his spine so that he will be a cripple for life, do you put him out of his pain?'
If you reply that men and beasts are different, they will answer that in this point they do not recognise the difference. 'Poor beast! let him live out his little life.' And they will give him grass and water till he dies.
This is the exception that I meant, but now, after I have written it, I am not so sure. Is it an exception?