Consider this Burman. He had committed theft. That he admitted. He was prepared to atone for it. The magistrate was not content with that, but made him also atone for other men's sins. He was twice punished, because other men who escaped did ill. That was the first thing he could not understand. And then, when he had atoned both for his own sin and for that of others, when he came out of prison, he was looked upon as in a worse state than if he had never atoned at all. If he had never been in prison, his master would have forgiven his theft and taken him back, but now he would not. The boy was proud of having atoned in full, very full, measure for his sin; the master looked upon the punishment as inconceivably worse than the crime. So the officer went about and told the story of his boy coming back, and expecting to be taken on again, as a curious instance of the mysterious working of the Oriental mind, as another example of the extraordinary way Easterns argue. 'Just to think,' said the officer, 'he was not ashamed of having been in prison!' And the boy? Well, he probably said nothing, but went away and did not understand, and kept the matter to himself, for they are very dumb, these people, very long-suffering, very charitable. You may be sure that he never railed at the law, or condemned his old master for harshness. He would wonder why he was punished because other people had sinned and escaped. He could not understand that. It would not occur to him that sending him to herd with other criminals, that cutting him off from all the gentle influences of life, from the green trees and the winds of heaven, from the society of women, from the example of noble men, from the teachings of religion, was a curious way to render him a better man. He would suppose it was intended to make him better, that he should leave gaol a better man than when he entered, and he would take the intention for the deed. Under his own king things were not much better. It is true that very few men were imprisoned, fine being the usual punishment, but still, imprisonment there was, and so that would not seem to him strange; and as to the conduct of his master, he would be content to leave that unexplained. The Buddhist is content to leave many things unexplained until he can see the meaning. He is not fond of theories. If he does not know, he says so. 'It is beyond me,' he will say; 'I do not understand.' He has no theory of an occidental mind to explain acts of ours of which he cannot grasp the meaning; he would only not understand. But the pity of it--think of the pity of it all! Surely there is nothing more pathetic than this: that a sinner should not understand the wherefore of his sentence, that the justice administered to him should be such as he cannot see the meaning of.