ot think, and see, and
understand. 'Work is a means to leisure,' Aristotle told us long ago,
and leisure, adds the Burman, is needed that you may compose your own
soul. Work, no doubt, is a necessity, too, but not excess of it.

The necessary thing to a man is not gold, nor position, nor power, but
simply his own soul. Nothing is worth anything to him compared with
that, for while a man lives, what is the good of all these things if he
have no leisure to enjoy them? And when he dies, shall they go down into
the void with him? No; but a man's own soul shall go with and be with
him for ever.

A Burman's ideas of this world are dominated by his religion. His
religion says to him, 'Consider your own soul, that is the main thing.'
His religion says to him, 'The aim of every man should be happiness.'
These are the fundamental parts of his belief; these he learns from his
childhood: they are born in him. He looks at all the world by their
light. Later on, when he grows older, his religion says to him, 'And
happiness is only to be found by renouncing the whole world.' This is a
hard teaching. This comes to him slowly, or all Buddhists would be
monks; but, meanwhile, if he does but remember the first two precepts,
he is on the right path.

He does do this. Happiness is the aim he seeks. Work and power and money
are but the means by which he will arrive at the leisure to teach his
own soul. First the body, then the spirit; but with us it is surely
first the body, and then the body again.

He often watches us with surprise. He sees us work and work and work;
he sees us grow old quickly, and our minds get weary; he sees our
sympathies grow very narrow, our ideas bent into one groove, our whole
souls destroyed for a little money, a little fame, a little promotion,
till we go home, and do not know what to do with ourselves, because we
have no work and no sympathy with anything; and at last we die, and take
down with us our souls--souls fit for nothing but to be driven for ever
with a goad behind and a golden fruit in front.

But do not suppose that the Burmese are idle. Such a nation of workers
was never known. Every man works, every woman works, every child works.
Life is not an easy thing, but a hard, and there is a great deal of work
to be done. There is not an idle man or woman in all Burma. The class of
those who live on other men's labour is unknown. I do not think the
Burman would care for such a life, for a certain amoun