ion of the value of these
things. Something of this sort might be said of other religions, and yet
they have all striven to use the temporal power.

I do not know what the explanation is, unless it be that the Burmese
believe their religion and other people do not. However that may be,
there is no doubt of the fact. Religion had nothing whatever--absolutely
nothing in any way at all--to do with government. There are no
exceptions. What has led people to think sometimes that there were
exceptions is the fact that the king confirmed the Thathanabaing--the
head of the community of monks--after he had been elected by his
fellow-monks. The reason of this was as follows: All ecclesiastical
matters--I use the word 'ecclesiastical' because I can find no
other--were outside the jurisdiction of civil limits. By
'ecclesiastical' I mean such matters as referred to the ownership and
habitation of monasteries, the building of pagodas and places of prayer,
the discipline of the monkhood. Such questions were decided by
ecclesiastical courts under the Thathanabaing.

Now, it was necessary sometimes, as may be understood, to enforce these
decrees, and for that reason to apply to civil power. Therefore there
must be a head of the monks acknowledged by the civil power as head, to
make such applications as might be necessary in this, and perhaps some
other such circumstances.

It became, therefore, the custom for the king to acknowledge by order
the elect of the monks as Thathanabaing for all such purposes. That was
all. The king did not appoint him at all.

Any such idea as a monk interfering in the affairs of state, or
expressing an opinion on war or law or finance, would appear to the
Burmese a negation of their faith. They were never led away by the idea
that good might come of such interference. This terrible snare has never
caught their feet. They hold that a man's first duty is to his own soul.
Never think that you can do good to others at the same time as you
injure yourself, and the greatest good for your own heart is to learn
that beyond all this turmoil and fret there is the Great Peace--so great
that we can hardly understand it, and to reach it you must fit yourself
for it. The monk is he who is attempting to reach it, and he knows that
he cannot do that by attempting to rule his fellow-man; that is probably
the very worst thing he could do. And therefore the monkhood, powerful
as they were, left all politics alone. I have n