I have given a chapter to this "Science," not because it appears to me that it is ever likely to become a real force or of real importance, but because it illustrates, I think, the reason of the success or otherwise of all religions. It exhibits in exaggerated form what is the nature of all religions.
They come to fulfil an emotional want, or wants that are imperative and that call for relief. And they succeed and persist exactly as they minister to these emotional wants. The emotion that requires religion is always a pessimism of some form or other, a weariness, a hopelessness. And the religion is accepted because it combats that helplessness and gives a hope. All religions are optimisms to their believers.
A great deal of foolishness may be included in a faith without injury to its success. Doctrine, theory, scientific theology, may be as empty and meaningless as it is in Christian Science, and still the faith will live. And the central idea must be exaggerated. It must be so exaggerated that to outsiders it appears only an immense falsehood. It is so in all the religions. Truth lies in the mean, power in the extreme. They are opposed as are freewill and destination, as are God and Law.
There is one complaint that all Europeans make of the Burmese. It matters not what the European's duties may be, what his profession, or his trade, or his calling--it is always the same, "the Burmans will not stand discipline." It is, says the European, fatal to him in almost all walks of life. For instance, the British Government tried at one time in Burma to raise Burmese regiments officered by Europeans, after the pattern of the Indian troops. There seemed at first no reason why it should not succeed. The Burmans are not cowards. Although not endowed with the fury of the Pathan or the bloodthirsty valour of the Ghurka, the Burman is brave. He will do many things none but brave men can do; kill panthers with sharpened sticks, for instance, and navigate the Irrawaddy in flood in canoes, with barely two inches free board. He is, in his natural state in the villages, unaccustomed to any strict discipline. But then, so are most people; and if the levies of the Burmese kings were but a mob, why, so are most native levies. There seemed _a priori_ no reason why Burmese troops should not be fairly useful. And the attempt was made. It failed.