=3.= India's sacred books abound in moral maxims and counsels. Brahmanism is substantially a philosophy of life rather than a religion. But its pantheism and doctrine of the pre-existence and transmigration of souls have distorted and misdirected the moral idea. Its pantheism confounds the human with the divine, both in its origin and destination. Its belief in transmigration, with its perpetual succession of rebirths into conditions of woeful individual life unless the soul's unhappy agitations and unrest should be composed by virtue, shapes the moral task mainly, not only into restraint of the appetites and passions, but into such austerity and stern self-abnegation as may prepare the soul, on the death of the body, to attain the perfect repose of Nirvana the complete extinction of human passions, or, as Buddhism represents, annihilation of conscious individuality in reabsorption into the absolute existence. In this system the aim of morality is not "the right," but the desired good of tranquil happiness, or the final goal of merging self-conscious personality back again into the Great All from which it arose. The ground of the moral striving--it can hardly be called obligation--is the adaptedness of it to secure this result.[41] ==Persian Teaching.== =4.= Zoroastrianism (Mazdæism), from about B. C. 1500-1000, confessedly presents an ethical teaching that, among oriental views, is second only to that of the Hebrews. Its theological dualism, which seems to have encroached upon an earlier purer monotheism, of two eternal principles or powers, Ormuzed (Ahura Mazda) the good power, and Ahriman (Angra Mainyou) the evil power, manifestly arose from the effort to solve the dread problem of evil in the world. Zoroastrian teaching represents Ormuzed as the all-knowing and the holy creator of the world. He cannot create evil. He is the source of all purity, order and righteousness. Wrong and misery have come into the world from Ahriman, the opposite contending power in the universe. Zoroastrianism thus gives the world-system a moral foundation and law of order. The moral life is a holy conflict with the forces of evil within human nature and assailing it. The supreme end of life is to increase the ascendency of righteousness and establish its everlasting reign of truth and goodness. The goal of it comes in a future life of blessedness. The ground of righteousness is thus placed in the nature and will of the eternal creator, to whom obedience is due, against the influences of the malign power of evil.[42] ==Greek Theories.==