734 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



yet be demonstrated, when the antiquities of Turkestan and 

 of INIedo-Persia are more fully investigated. 



We strongly incline also to the belief that Christ and coming 

 Christianity received much of noblest teaching, not from the 

 Semitic writings, which had proved narrow, exclusive, and 

 unhuman in many features, as well as incapable of wide human 

 acceptance; but from the sayings and writings of Zarathushtra 

 and his successors, of Plato and many other of the Greek phil- 

 osophers who taught from 500 B. C. to Christ's day. It was 

 on this account also that Jowett wrote "the germs of all ideas, 

 even of most Christian ones, are to be found in Plato." 



In view of previous definitions then, and divesting it of 

 all supernatural, unnatural, and human embellishments that 

 some religionists have added for effect, we would now define 

 monotheism as "that religious attitude and belief founded 

 on higher polytheism or on heliotheism, in which man came 

 to view the world and the universe as under the government 

 and guidance of one all-pervading Power, Energy, or remotely 

 placed unity or Personality, whose attributes, as measured 

 by later human standards, were love, truth, and justice, as 

 set forth in the works of nature, and in man's relation to that 

 personality and to each other. These attributes were there- 

 fore binding on all who accepted this belief, as their appropri- 

 ate rule of conduct toward the divine Being and toward their 

 fellow-men." 



At this stage of our inquiry a short statement may be inter- 

 jected as to the origin and significance of Buddhism, since 

 this has great interest from the standpoint of religious evo- 

 lution. 



Gautama or Gotama was the founder of Buddhism, and so 

 illustrates once more the truth of our proposition, that most 

 or all new variations or mutations start from a single indi- 

 vidual. Of noble birth, brought up amid the rigorous re- 

 ligious teachings of the Brahmins, and also amid sensual indul- 

 gences that these teachings winked at or even permitted, of 

 alert mind and fine bodily presence, aspiring to ever higher 

 views of human life and destiny as he grew to maturity, the 



