Let it not therefore be made a reproach to Christianity that it sees in love the very principle of relationship between reasonable beings, the very principle of the moral law and of justice. Paul says with reason that he who loves others fulfils the law. In effect, the commandments: thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not covet, and the rest, were summed up in: thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. The defect of Christianity—a defect from which Buddhism is free—is that the love of men is there conceived as disappearing, in the last analysis, in the love of God. Man is not beloved except in God and for God, and human society as a whole possesses no foundation nor rule of life except in the relationship of men to God. Well, if the love of man for man, properly understood, actually implies respect for rectitude, the same thing cannot be said with the same degree of emphasis for the love of man for God, and in God’s sight. The conception of a society founded on the love of God contains the seeds of theocratic government with all its abuses. Moreover, if in Christian morality love of man resolves itself, in the last resort, into love of God, love of God is always adulterated with fear; the Old Testament insists upon it with positive complacency. The fear of the Lord plays an important rôle in the celestial sanction, and justice also, which is essential to Christianity, and which more or less definitely antagonizes and sometimes even paralyzes it. It is thus that, after having traced the sentiment of respect itself and of justice to a foundation in love, Christianity suddenly reinstates the former, re-endows it with precedence and that under its most primitive and savage form—the form of fear in man and vengeance in God. [Sidenote: Respect for the welfare of sentient beings in general the essence of morality.]