If a man wishes for nothing, neither the continuance of present comforts nor future blessings, why need he care for the gods? Who can hurt him, so long as he stays in his frame of mind? He may well shake off all religions and every fear, for he is stronger than God, and the universe holds nothing worth his effort to get. This was the doctrine taught by Buddha Sakyanuni, a philosopher opposed to every form of religion, but who is the reputed founder of the most numerous sect now on the globe. He sought to free the minds of his day from the burden of the Brahmanic ritual, by cultivating a frame of mind beyond desire or admiration, and hence beyond the need of a creed. The second element, the idea of power, is an intellectual abstraction. Its character is fluctuating. At first it is most vague, corresponding to what in its most general sense we term “the supernatural.” Later, it is regarded under its various exhibitions as separable phenomena, as in polytheisms, in which must be included trinitarian systems and the dualistic doctrine of the Parsees. But among the Egyptians, Greeks and Aztecs, as well as in the words of Zarathustra and in the theology of Christianity, we frequently meet with the distinct recognition of the fundamental unity of all power. At core, all religions have seeds of monotheism. When we generalize the current concepts of motion or force beyond individual displays and relative measures of quantity, we recognize their qualitative identity, and appreciate the logical unity under which we must give them abstract expression. This is the process, often unconscious, which has carried most original thinkers to monotheistic doctrines, no matter whence they started.