In the Buddhist "Kathâ Sarit Sâgara" it is written: "Why should we cling to this perishable body? In the eye of the wise the only thing it is good for is to benefit one's fellow creatures." And another Buddhist author expresses the same idea with still more force and beauty: "Full of love for all things in the world, practising virtue in order to benefit others--this man alone is happy." But even when the moralists did not lay down the "Golden Rule," they taught that the cause of sin and of suffering was selfishness; and they spoke strongly against self-pity, and self-love, and self-aggrandisement. What is the lesson of Buddha, and of the Indian, Persian, and Greek moralists? Buddha went out into the world to search for the cause of human sin and sorrow. He found the cause to be self-indulgence and the cure to be self-conquest. "The cause of pain," he said, "is desire." And this lesson was repeated over and over again by Socrates, Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Plutarch, and Seneca.. The moral is that selfishness is bad, and unselfishness is good. And this moral is backed by the almost universal practice of all men in all ages and of all races in testing or weighing the virtue or the value of any person's conduct. What is the common assay for moral gold? The test of the _motive_. Sir Gorgio Midas has given £100,000 to found a Midas hospital. What says the man in the street? "Ah! fine advertisement for the Midas pills!" Mr. Queech, the grocer and churchwarden, has given £5 to the new Methodist Sunday School. "H'm!" says the cynical average man, "a sprat to catch a mackerel." Sir Norman Conquest, Bart, M.P., has made an eloquent speech in favour of old-age pensions. Chigwin, the incorruptible, remarks with a sniff that "it looks as if there would soon be a General Election." What do these gibes mean? They mean that the benevolence of Messrs. Midas, Queech, and Conquest is inspired by selfishness, and therefore is not worthy, but base. Now, when a gang of colliers go down a burning pit to save life, or when a sailor jumps overboard in a storm to save a drowning fireman, or when a Russian countess goes to Siberia for trying to free the Russian serfs, there is no sneer heard. Chigwin's fierce eye lights up, the man in the street nods approvingly, and the average man in the railway compartment observes sententiously: "That's pluck." Well. Is it not clear that these acts are approved and held good? And is it not clear that they are held to be good because they are felt to be unselfish? Now, I make bold to say that in no case shall we find a man or woman honoured or praised by men when his conduct is believed to be selfish. It is always selfishness that men scorn. It is always self-sacrifice or unselfish service they admire. This shows us that deep in the universal heart the root idea of morality is social service. This is not a divine truth: it is a human truth.