The East and the West

Abstract

From time immemorial the great thinkers of Mankind have proclaimed ideas which, though clothed in different words, and elucidated by different metaphor, proved a common origin. The great value, attached to those ideas, lay in the fact that they regulated the behaviour of men to each other. They all tended to make the best of life. They are, in all great religions, the same and we call them, collectively, Moral Law. There cannot be the slightest doubt, that as regards this Law, as regards its fundamental precepts, all world-religions teach the same principles, amongst which we find preservation of human life, mutual aid and love, honesty and truthfulness, respect for personal property, parental and filial love, and the holiness of matrimony universally accepted, and admitted as axioms which need no discussion.