n. So they grew very
weary.

'These flowers,' they said at last, 'are always the same. We are tired
of them; their smell is heavy; they are dead. This forest is full of
thorns only. How shall we escape from it? Ever as we go round and round
we hate the flowers more, we feel the thorns more acutely. We must
escape! We are sick of Time and his whip, our feet are very, very weary,
our eyes are dazzled and dim. We, too, would seek the Peace. We laughed
at those before who went along the rocky path; we did not want peace;
but now it seems to us the most beautiful thing in the world. Will Time
never cease to drive us on and on? Will these lights _never_ cease to
flash to and fro?'

Each man at last will turn to the straight road. He will find out. Every
man will find out at last that the forest is hateful, that the flowers
are deadly, that the thorns are terrible; every man will learn to fear
Time.

Then, when the longing for peace has come, he will go to the straight
way and find it; no man will remain in the forest for ever. He will
learn. When he is very, very weary, when his feet are full of thorns,
and his back scarred with the lashes of Time--great, kindly Time, the
schoolmaster of the world--he will learn.

Not till he has learnt will he desire to enter into the straight road.

But in the end all men will come. We at the last shall all meet together
where Time and Life shall be no more.

This is a Burman allegory of Buddhism. It was told me long ago. I trust
I have not spoilt it in the retelling.

CHAPTER XXV

CONCLUSION

This is the end of my book. I have tried always as I wrote to remember
the principles that I laid down for myself in the first chapter. Whether
I have always done so I cannot say. It is so difficult, so very
difficult, to understand a people--any people--to separate their beliefs
from their assents, to discover the motives of their deeds, that I fear
I must often have failed.

My book is short. It would have been easy to make a book out of each
chapter, to write volumes on each great subject that I have touched on;
but I have not done so--I have always been as brief as I could.

I have tried always to illustrate only the central thought, and not the
innumerable divergencies, because only so can a great or strange thought
be made clear. Later, when the thought is known, then it is easy to
stray into the byways of thought, always remembering that they are
byways, wandering from a