To John Francis Erskine he wrote in 1793: ‘My independent British mind oppression might bend, but could not subdue.’
In the ‘Vision’ the message he says he received from Coila, the genius of Kyle, the part of Ayrshire in which he was born, was:
Preserve the dignity of Man, with soul erect.
Burns has been criticised for meddling with what his critics called politics. The highest messages Christ gave to the world were the value of the individual soul, and brotherhood based on the unity of developed individual souls. His highest messages were understood by Burns more clearly than by any one else during his time, and Burns was too great a man to be untrue to his greatest visions. His poems are still among the best interpretations of Christ’s ideals of democracy and brotherhood.
The supreme aim of Burns was to secure for all men and women freedom from the unnatural restrictions of class or custom, so that each individual might have equal opportunity for the development of his highest element of power, his individuality, or self-hood—really the image of God in each. God gave him the vision of the ideal: ‘Why should ae man better fare, and a’ men brothers?’ and he tried to reveal the great vision to the world to kindle the hearts of men.
Burns was a devoted son, and a loving, considerate, respectful, and generous brother. After his father died, Robert wrote to his cousin: ‘On the 13th current I lost the best of fathers. Though, to be sure, we have had long warning of the impending stroke, still the feelings of nature claim their part, and I cannot recollect the tender endearments and paternal lessons of the best of friends and the ablest of instructors without feeling what, perhaps, the calmer dictates of reason would partly condemn.
‘I hope my father’s friends in your country will not let their connection in this place die with him. For my part, I shall ever with pleasure—with pride—acknowledge my connection with those who were allied by the ties of blood and friendship to a man whose memory I shall ever honour and revere.’
On the stone above his father’s grave in Alloway Kirkyard are engraved the words Burns wrote as his father’s epitaph:
O ye, whose cheek the tear of pity stains,
Draw near with pious reverence and attend!
Here lies the loving husband’s dear remains,
The tender father, and the gen’rous friend;
The pitying heart that felt for human woe;
The dauntless heart that feared no human pride;
The friend of man—to vice alone a foe;
For ev’n his failings leaned to virtue’s side.
John Murdoch warmly approved of this epitaph of his former pupil and friend Robert. He wrote: ‘I have often wished, for the good of mankind, that it were as customary to honour and perpetuate the memory of those who excel in moral rectitude, as it is to extol what are called heroic actions.’