nd the "cold of winter,"
constituted the foundation of a belief in a personal Devil; and, when
the time was ripe for the appearance of his satanic majesty, it required
only a hypochondriac--a disordered mental organization--to formulate and
project this gloomy and unwholesome doctrine.

There is little known of the life and character of Laotse except that
he labored assiduously through a long life-time for the establishment
of certain principles or tenets which he believed to be essential to the
well-being of humanity. In the twentieth chapter of his work are found
to be some hints of his personality and of the gloomy cast of his
character. He complains that while other men are joyous and gay, he
alone is despondent. He is "calm like a child that does not yet smile."
He is "like a stupid fellow, so confused does he feel. Ordinary men are
enlightened; he is obscure and troubled in mind. Like the sea, he is
forgotten and driven about like one who has no certain resting place.
All other men are of use; he alone is clownish like a peasant. He alone
is unlike other men, but he honors the nursing mother."

Of all the various teachers which arose during the fifth, sixth, and
seventh centuries B.C., none of them were able to rise to the position
of moral grandeur occupied by Gotama Buddha. The efforts put forth by
this great teacher seem to have been humane rather than religious. In
his time, especially in India, society had become encysted beneath
a crust of seemingly impenetrable conservatism, while religion, or
priestcraft, riveted the chains by which the masses of the people were
enslaved.

The mission of Buddha was to burst asunder the bonds of the oppressed
and to abolish all distinctions of caste. This was to be accomplished
through the awakening of the divine life in each individual. The leading
processes by which the lines of caste were weakened were in direct
opposition to the established order of society. It was a blow at the old
Brahminical social and religious code which had grown up under the reign
of priest-craft.

Notwithstanding the sex prejudice which had come to prevail in India,
it was directly stated by Buddha that any man or woman who became his
disciple, who renounced the world and by abstinence from the lower
indulgences of sense proclaimed her or his adherence to the higher
principles of life, "at once lost either the privilege of a high caste
or the degradation of a low one." Earthly distinctions w