66 Evolution and Religion 



inculcated such practical morality as the foregoing, 

 we should find the profound saying recorded in a papy- 

 rus which is the oldest in the world, written 4,000 years 

 ago, and preserved in the library of Paris to-day, " The 

 bad man's life is what the wise know to be death " ? * 

 Egypt's idea of what constituted the general good may 

 have indeed been limited by the narrow confines of 

 country. It was a national religion and hence perished 

 with the nation. But that it insisted upon the absolute, 

 the religious necessity of subordinating self-love to the 

 good of others in the nation at least, seems to me un- 

 doubted. 



China 



How is it now with that oldest existing and strangest 

 of all civilizations — the sphinx of human history, 

 China? Here are a people who have seen Assyria, 

 Persia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, all rise to power 

 and decay. Their empire alone has survived. Does 

 their religion inculcate also the idea of individual 

 self-sacrifice for the general good ? In my estimation, 

 Confucius taught little else. 



Confucius 



His practical mind abstained equally from meta- 

 physics and from theology. After meeting Lao-tse, 

 the philosophical founder of Taoism, he is reported to 

 have frankly confessed his inability to comprehend 

 1 Clarke's Ten Great Religions, p. 249. 



