s before the birth of
Christ.

Centuries before King Asoka the Buddhists sent out missionaries all over
the world.

Which religion was the borrower from the other--Buddhism or
Christianity?

Two centuries before Christ, King Asoka had cut upon the rocks these
words:

I pray with every variety of prayer for those who differ with
me in creed, that they, following after my example, may with
me attain unto eternal salvation. And whoso doeth this is
blessed of the inhabitants of this world; and in the next
world endless moral merit resulteth from such religious charity
--_Edict XI_.

How many centuries did it take the Christians to rise to that level of
wisdom and charity? How many Christians have reached it yet?

But the altruistic idea is very much older than Buddha, for it existed
among forms of life very much earlier and lower than the human, and has,
indeed, been a powerful factor in evolution.

Speaking of "The Golden Rule" in his _Confessions of Faith of a Man of
Science_, Haeckel says:

In the human family this maxim has always been accepted as
self-evident; as ethical instinct it was an inheritance
derived from our animal ancestors. It had already found a
place among the herds of apes and other social mammals; in a
similar manner, but with wider scope, it was already present
in the most primitive communities and among the hordes of the
least advanced savages. Brotherly love--mutual support,
succour, protection, and the like--had already made its
appearance among gregarious animals as a social duty; for
without it the continued existence of such societies is
impossible. Although at a later period, in the case of man,
these moral foundations of society came to be much more highly
developed, their oldest prehistoric source, as Darwin has shown,
is to be sought in the social instincts of animals. Among the
higher vertebrates (dogs, horses, elephants, etc.), as among
the higher articulates (ants, bees, termites, etc.), also, the
development of social relations and duties is the indispensable
condition of their living together in orderly societies. Such
societies have for man also been the most important instrument
of intellectual and moral progress.

It is not to revelation that we owe the ideal of human brotherhood, but
to evolution. It is because altruism is better than s