s of character in the members of the higher
grades. These differ from one another in the conception of the ultimate
Power of the world and of the nature of salvation and the mode of
attaining it, and in other less important points. They are so highly
composite in structure that their interrelations are complicated, and
those that are brought together by one critical canon may be separated
by another. Buddhism is allied on one side (the ignoring of deity) to
Confucianism and Epicureanism, on another side (the hope of moral
salvation) to Christianity. Zoroastrianism touches the Veda in its
theistic construction, and is remarkably like Judaism in its
organization. Christianity is Jewish on one side and Graeco-Roman on
another. Islam has Christian and Jewish conceptions attached to the
old-Semitic view of life.

+1151+. A distinction of importance is that between national religions
and those founded each by a single man (Buddhism, Christianity,
Islam).[2097] This distinction may be pressed too far--all religions
have great men who have given new directions to thought, and no
religion can be said to be wholly the creation of an individual man,
since all, as is pointed out above, are outcomes of the ideas of
communities.[2098] The distinction in question is not a satisfactory
basis for a general classification since it fails to note the
theological differences between the various religions. Nevertheless, it
embodies a significant fact: in the course of the history of the world
the three religions above-named have come to divide the civilized world
among them, that is, they have been selected as best responding to the
religious needs of men. No one of them is universal, but the three
together practically include the civilized world.[2099] They are
modified in various ways by their adherents, but they have not been
superseded. They have grown beyond the ideas of their founders, but
these latter nevertheless occupy a unique position. Moses and Zoroaster
are dim figures whose work it is impossible to define, but the teachings
of Buddha and Jesus, though they left no writings, are known with
substantial accuracy, and Mohammed has expressed himself in a book. The
persons of the three founders are the objects of a devotion not given to
other leaders. These things justify us in putting Buddhism,
Christianity, and Mohammedanism in a class by themselves, of which the
distinguishing note is the discarding of local national ideas and
us