“The love of our kind forms the corner stone of our single religion, just as the like is made the foundation upon which your many creeds are built. But while your religious teachings have brought no great fruits, ours have yielded a harvest of glorious consequences. If it will interest you, I shall tell you why.” CHAPTER IV. At the dawn of, and during the first stages of their civilization, the people of the Earth found themselves surrounded with natural forces which, in their scant knowledge of the laws of the universe, were ascribed to the arbitrary and willful caprices of a great hidden being. They found a mysterious power above them, and everywhere an overwhelming evidence of design. The unthinkable and unknown character of the infinite and eternal was not then acknowledged; and the failure of any to explain this unseen intelligence and power incited their imaginations to do for them what the closest investigation had failed to accomplish. As may have been expected, they clothed their imaginary deity with the qualities, propensities, and passions of themselves. Any violent convulsion of nature was taken by them as a certain sign of his anger; while the normal state of rest, and the undisturbed processes of animal and vegetable development and growth were looked upon as concessions in their special favor. From a belief in the supervision of the deity over every single one of the innumerable processes of nature, they naturally imbibed the idea that they each were objects of his personal watchfulness and attention, and as a consequence, that all the fortunes and vicissitudes of their lives were dependent upon his moods. It may very well be supposed that with this conception of the deity, the chief purpose of life would be to find favor with Him, to discover his wishes, and to learn his commands; since, in accordance with this simple and crude idea, every one’s success and comfort in life depended upon his conciliation. With these views of nature and the universe, they came in due time to observe that within themselves were feelings and sentiments entirely apart from the ordinary epicurean impulses which governed them. We may imagine in those cruel times the warrior standing over his prostrate victim with upraised club, stayed in the act of killing him by a sentiment of pity, and enjoying afterward as a result of his compassion a pleasure which was as strange and unaccountable to him as his first sight of a comet. There was no apparent motive whatever for his humane act. On the contrary, it had deprived him of spoil, and reduced the honor of his victory. And so, all the inclinations to virtue which brought no material and immediate rewards were regarded as mysterious and inexplicable as the great hidden power, and by a very natural sequence of reasoning, a part of it.