If by civilisation we mean an enlightened progress towards the realisation of the happiness of mankind—without necessarily assuming the truth of the Utilitarian position that human action ought to be deliberately directed towards the attainment of the greatest possible sum of pleasures—there can be no doubt that the Burmese people are very high indeed in the scale of civilised races. Nothing is easier than to criticise such statements. Some will say that the happiness of a Burman is a matter of temperament rather than the result of the conditions of his social environment. The Christian who holds that his religion is the only true one, and that all others are false, will condemn the Burman, because, being a Buddhist and a nat-worshipper, he is a "heathen." The man of science will say that in spite of his tolerance and kind-heartedness and humanity, the Burman has made no discoveries worth speaking of in medicine, knows nothing of surgery, and has never invented any labour-saving machinery. In fairness it should be added—for we are still discussing civilisation—that the Burman is not fond of applying his intellect to the devising of mechanical contrivances for slaughtering his fellow-men. Whatever be the shortcomings of his civilisation, the Burman has made one momentous discovery, and it is to this point that I have been trying to lead up: he has discovered how to make life happy without selfishness, and to combine an adequate power of hard work with a corresponding ability to enjoy himself gracefully. "Put him on the river he loves," says Mr Scott O'Connor,[381] "with a swift and angry current against him, and he is capable of superb effort. Turn his beautiful craft, enriched with exquisite carvings, down stream, with wind and tide in his favour, and he will lie all day in the sun, and exult in the Nirvana of complete idleness. And this is not because he is 'a lazy hound,' as I have heard him called, but because he is a philosopher and an artist; because there is a blue sky above him which he can look at, a river before him rippling with colour and light; because the earning of pence is a small thing to him by comparison with the joy of life, and material things themselves but an illusion of the temporary flesh."
ORIENTAL CIVILISATION
A few years ago I wandered alone, as I have said, through the wildest parts of the trans-Mekong Shan States and Siam. I had no credentials, no guide, no servants, and had no knowledge of the languages spoken around me. I was received everywhere with the utmost kindness and the most open-hearted hospitality. In village after village in the valleys of the Nam-U and Mekong I found myself an honoured guest. I could give numberless instances of the tact and fine feeling constantly displayed by my hosts in their dealings with the dumb and unknown foreigner who seemed to have sprung upon them from nowhere. Money did not come into the matter at all: it was of no use to my hosts, for there was hardly any trade, and all their food and clothes were prepared in their own villages. During several memorable weeks I travelled through a fairyland of beauty, sometimes on foot, sometimes in a canoe or on a raft. I saw much of the domestic and social life of the people, and so charming was all I saw that I fear my pleasure was not untainted with envy. It seemed to me that not a single essential of true civilisation was there wanting; I felt that all my preconceived notions of what civilisation really meant had been somehow distorted and must be pulled down and built up anew. During my few weeks in Burma I did not travel in the same way, and steamers and trains gave me little opportunity of seeing Burmese life from the inside; but from what came under my own notice, and from what was told me by others who knew, I have no doubt that where the Burman has not lost his national graces through contact with an alien civilisation he is just as courteous and tolerant and well-mannered and "civilised" as those neighbours of his of whom I have such golden memories.
No doubt one of the greatest achievements of a civilisation such as that of Laos or Burma consists in the spirit of peace and restfulness that it seems to embody. There is, of course, a fallacy in supposing that a contented feeling of "having arrived" is to be expected at all in this human life. Whether we believe in an existence beyond the grave or not, few of us dare to be so optimistic as to suppose that perfection in any form can be realised on earth, although we instinctively feel that we must not be satisfied with anything less. Yet when in some parts of south-eastern Asia we have once breathed that Nirvana-like spirit of restfulness and peace, may we not be pardoned if we find there a strange and magical beauty that all the wisdom of the West can never yield us? It may be, indeed, that our complex Western civilisation, in spite of its materialism and its grossness, contains germs of a higher perfection than ever Burma or Indo-China dreamed of. A full realisation of human capacities, to use the phrase of T. H. Green, can hardly be expected in a simple form of society which calls for no great effort and in which there is no great temptation to deviate from the normal in either an upward or a downward direction. Our strenuous Western life, ugly and brutal as much of it is, and besmirched with the stains of blood and toil, may yet give birth to ideals nobler than ever stirred the imagination of southern Asia. The mountain rent by torrents and chasms, or the ocean tearing with white fangs the face of a cliff, presents to human eyes and minds a spectacle that contains a deeper and grander meaning than can ever be conveyed by the fragile beauty of the royalest of flowers: and the rose, for all its loveliness, fades and dies. Still, let us not despise the beauty that is flower-like, even if we meet it in a land of alien faces: we know that "he is false to God who flouts the rose."
ORIENTAL CIVILISATION
I have said that the Burman shows himself able, in play-hours, to enjoy himself gracefully. In the Burman—he is not alone among Orientals in this—there is no vulgarity. When he and his friends are having what we might call "a spree," he never behaves rudely or uproariously, nor does he get drunk.[382] His good taste and self-control are shown in his demeanour just as they are in his clothes. He is never a "bounder," either in manners or appearance. All these remarks apply with equal force to his women-folk. The Burmese woman, whatever her class may be and whatever her occupation, is always a lady. There may be much merriment, a great deal of noise, a considerable amount of good-humoured chaff, but no "mafficking." Can we say quite the same of "Merrie England"?
It is hardly fair to dwell on the brightest and most picturesque side of Burmese life—which no doubt has its dark side as well—and compare it with the gloomier and more horrible features of the social life of modern England. But what I wish to emphasise is the one fact that the Burmese people of all classes are able to enjoy themselves—and do so most heartily—without the least admixture of "hooliganism," which a very large class of our own countrymen and countrywomen are too obviously unable to do.[383] If an intelligent Burman were to visit England and set himself to discover why it is that among the poorer classes of our great cities merry-making is apparently inseparable from hideous and raucous vulgarity, he would probably ascribe it to the effect of long hours of degrading and mechanical labour, the drudgery and incessant routine of daily life in the sunless workshop and the dismal office—work from which the victims, owing to strenuous competition, derive only the meanest subsistence, and through which all ideas of gracefulness and good taste are obliterated, and all sense of beauty utterly destroyed.
MONASTERY AT PAGAN, IRRAWADDY RIVER, BURMA.