world to virtue; or negatively, in the words of _Light on the Path:_ "Abstain (from vice) because it is right to abstain--not that yourself shall be kept clean." And now to travel back into the thought behind, that you may see if Confucius was a materialist; whether or not he believed in the Soul;--and that if he was not a great original thinker, at least he commanded the ends of all great, true and original thinking. Man, he says, is naturally good. That is, collectively. _Man_ is divine and immortal; only _men_ are mortal and erring. Were there a true brotherhood of mankind established, a proper relation of the parts to the whole and to each other,--you would have no difficulty with what is evil in yourself. The lower nature with its temptations would not appear; the world-old battle with the flesh would be won. But separate yourself in yourself,--consider yourself as a selfhood, not as a unit in society;--and you find, there where you have put yourself, evil to contend with a-plenty. Virtue inheres in the Brotherhood of Man; vice in the separate personal and individual units. Virtue is in That which is no man's possession, but common to all: namely, the Soul--though he does not enlarge upon it as that; perhaps never mentions it as the Soul at all;--vice is in that which each has for himself alone: the personality. Hence his hatred of religiosity, of personal soul-saving. You were to guard against evil in the simplest way: by living wholly in humanity, finding all you motives and sources of action there. If you were, in the highest sense, simply a factor in human society, you were a good man. If you lived in yourself alone,--having all evil to meet there, you were likely to succumb to it; and you were on the wrong road anyway. Come out, then; think not of your soul to be saved, nor of what may befall you after death. You, as you, are of no account; all that matters is humanity as a whole, of which you are but a tiny part.--Now, if you like, say that Confucius did not teach Theosophy, because, _so far as we know,_ he said nothing about Karma or Reincarnation. I am inclined to think him one of the two or three supreme historical Teachers of Theosophy; and to say that his message, so infinitely simple, is one of the most wonderful presentations of it ever given.