Persian education, in the family and school, trained the youth to ride on horseback, to shoot with the bow and arrow, and, above all things, to speak the truth. This duty to speak the truth is to the Persian before all other duties, because truth is akin to clearness and light, and hence also to the good and pure—to Ahura-Mazda. Falsehood is the setting up of what is not, and hence inconsistent with reality. Hence the veil of falsehood prevents one from seeing reality, and hence it is akin to darkness. Next to truth-speaking is the practice of justice among the Persians. Like the truth, justice is self-consistent, and hence clear and simple. Justice treats each one according to his deed, returning upon him like for like. What one actually does is treated as the reality of his will, and justice is therefore a sort of respect shown toward personal reality. The thief steals property; justice says, “I respect your will; you wish to destroy the right of property, and _your_ right of property shall be destroyed because it is _your_ will. The people who are not thieves all will to respect the right of property, and therefore their property shall be respected. You, thief, shall lose your property, and also the ownership of your limbs: you shall go into prison, and sit still, and no longer possess the freedom of locomotion.” Injustice would make all human action uncertain and obscure, and the darkness of Ahriman would prevail. Truth-speaking is the worship of reality. If all things and all events are only a dream, it is of no consequence to pay so much respect to them as to be scrupulous of veracity in regard to them. Hence the Hindu makes monstrous fables about things and events, and lets them become the sport of his imagination. Thus we see how deep-reaching the religious principle is, and how widely different the Persian system of education is from the Hindu. The Chinese revere the past, and make their education consist in memorizing with superstitious exactness the forms of the past—the maxims of Confucius and Mencius. Even the vehicle of literature, the art of writing, requires prodigious efforts of memory to acquire it. “Do not exercise your spontaneity, but conform to the past. Be contented in repeating the thoughts which were uttered twenty-five hundred years ago. Make no new paths; plan out no new undertakings.” The Persian is not content with the past. He must assist Ahura-Mazda in the great contest with evil and darkness, and hence he must do something new. He must hurry to the front. Along the border-land rages the fight. The man who is content to remain within the domain already conquered is a craven, and does nothing for the extension of the realm of light and goodness, but allows the realm of darkness and evil to hold its own attitude of defiance.