But even so, we are not of those who by their own self-imposed limitations of possibility are condemned to find some direct physical contact to account for a similarity of ideas or even of phrasing. Granting, for instance, that there is much resemblance between the teachings of the Dharma of the Buddha and of the Gospel of the Christ, and that the same spirit of love and gentleness pervades them both, still there is no necessity to look for the reason of this resemblance to purely physical transmission. And so for other schools and other teachers; like conditions will produce similar phenomena; like effort and like aspiration will produce similar ideas, similar experience, and similar response. And this we believe to be the case in no general way, but that it is all very definitely ordered from within by the servants of the real guardians of things religious in this world. We are, then, not compelled to lay so much stress on the question of physical transmission, or to be seeking even to find proof of copying. The human mind in its various degrees is much the same in all climes and ages, and its inner experience has a common ground into which seed may be sown, as it is tilled and cleared of weeds. The good seed comes all from the same granary, and those who sow it pay no attention to the man-made outer distinctions of race and creed. However difficult, therefore, it may be to prove, from unquestionably historical statements, any direct influence of Indian thought on the conceptions and practices of some of these religious communities and philosophic schools of the Græco-Roman Empire, and although in any particular case similarity of ideas need not necessarily be assigned to direct physical transmission, nevertheless the highest probability, if not the greatest assurance, remains that even prior to the days of Apollonius there was some private knowledge in Greece of the general ideas of the Vedānta and Dharma; while in the case of Apollonius himself, even if we discount nine-tenths of what is related of him, his one idea seems to have been to spread abroad among the religious brotherhoods and institutions of the Empire some portion of the wisdom which he brought back with him from India.