d the progress of the race.
They differ in this, that each takes hold of one side of morality, and
lets go the opposite. Zoroaster bases his law on the eternal distinction
between right and wrong; Sakya-muni, on the natural laws and their
consequences, either good or evil. Zoroaster's law is, therefore, the law
of justice; Sakya-muni's, the law of mercy. The one makes the supreme good
to consist in truth, duty, right; the other, in love, benevolence, and
kindness. Zoroaster teaches providence: the monk of India teaches
prudence. Zoroaster aims at holiness, the Buddha at merit. Zoroaster
teaches and emphasizes creation: the Buddha knows nothing of creation, but
only nature or law. All these oppositions run back to a single root. Both
are moral reformers; but the one moralizes according to the method of
Bishop Butler, the other after that of Archdeacon Paley. Zoroaster
cognizes all morality as having its root within, in the eternal
distinction between right and wrong motive, therefore in God; but
Sakya-muni finds it outside of the soul, in the results of good and evil
action, therefore in the nature of things. The method of salvation,
therefore, according to Zoroaster, is that of an eternal battle for good
against evil; but according to the Buddha, it is that of self-culture and
virtuous activity.

Both of these systems, as being essentially moral systems in the interest
of humanity, proceed from persons. For it is a curious fact, that, while
the essentially spiritualistic religions are ignorant of their founders,
all the moral creeds of the world proceed from a moral source, i.e. a
human will. Brahmanism, Gnosticism, the Sufism of Persia, the Mysteries of
Egypt and Greece, Neo-Platonism, the Christian Mysticism of the Middle
Ages,--these have, strictly speaking, no founder. Every tendency to the
abstract, to the infinite, ignores personality.[133] Individual mystics we
know, but never the founder of any such system. The religions in which the
moral element is depressed, as those of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Greece,
Rome, are also without personal founders. But moral religions are the
religions of persons, and so we have the systems of Confucius, Buddha,
Zoroaster, Moses, Mohammed.[134] The Protestant Reformation was a protest
of the moral nature against a religion which had become divorced from
morality. Accordingly we have Luther as the founder of Protestantism; but
mediaeval Christianity grew up with no personal leader.