Buddhism has been well characterized as the incarnation of sympathy with suffering. Inculcating a morality of gentleness, instilling tenderness toward every living thing, it has exercised a softening influence upon the spirit and temper of every race that has received its teachings. We have in the preceding chapter noted its humanizing effects upon Japanese morality.[298] Even in India, where after a comparatively short period of supremacy it yielded sway again to Brahmanism, it left significant traces of its brief dominance in the deepened humanitarianism of the restored creed of the Brahmans, and in certain of those traits and dispositions of the native races which render truthfully descriptive the term “gentle Hindu.” “The land of meekness and gentleness,” were the words used by a native Hindu[299] at a recent Lake Mohonk Conference to express the ethical character of India. [Sidenote: Historical significance of the ethical unity created by Buddhism] There is deep significance for the moral evolution of the human race in this ethical propaganda of Buddhism. For just as Christianity has created an ethical unity among the nations of the Western world, so has Buddhism created a certain ethical unity among the races of the Eastern world. The historical importance of this lies in the fact that these two ethical systems, though differing in form and content, are in spirit essentially the same: both are moralities of universalism; both teach the brotherhood of man; both exalt the gentle[300] and self-denying virtues; both enjoin self-conquest; both inculcate the duty of universal benevolence. Because of this moral kinship, the ethical conquests of Buddhism--and there is not a land in the Far East that has not felt its influence--are in a degree supplemental to those of Christianity in the West, and are thus an important step in the creation of the ethical unity of the world. India and Japan are both nearer to us ethically to-day than they would be, were it not for the modifying influence of Buddhist teachings upon the ethical spirit and temper of their peoples.[301] CHAPTER VIII THE ETHICS OF ZOROASTRIANISM: AN IDEAL OF COMBAT I. PHILOSOPHICAL AND RELIGIOUS IDEAS WHICH CREATED THE ETHICAL TYPE [Sidenote: Religious dualism]