ate nor study. One only belongs to our topic--the
successive appearance of idealistic conceptions that, like all other
creations of mind, tend to realize themselves, the moral ideal
consisting of new combinations arising from the predominance of one
feeling, or from an unconscious elaboration (inspiration), or from
analogy.

At the beginning of civilizations we meet semi-historic, semi-legendary
persons--Manu, Zoroaster, Moses, Confucius, etc., who were inventors or
reformers in the social and moral spheres. That a part of the inventions
attributed to them must be credited to predecessors or successors is
probable; but the invention, no matter who is its author, remains none
the less invention. We have said elsewhere, and may repeat, that the
expression _inventor_ in morals may seem strange to some, because we are
imbued with the notion of a knowledge of good and evil that is innate,
universal, bestowed on all men and in all times. If we admit, on the
other hand, as observation compels us to do, not a ready-made morality,
but a morality in the making, it must be, indeed, the _creation_ of an
individual or of a group. Everybody recognizes inventors in geometry,
in music, in the plastic and mechanic arts; but there have also been men
who, in their moral dispositions, were very superior to their
contemporaries, and were promoters, initiators.[140] For reasons of
which we are ignorant, analogous to those that produce a great poet or a
great painter, there arise moral geniuses who feel strongly what others
do not feel at all, just as does a great poet, in comparison with the
crowd. But it is not enough that they feel: they must create, they must
realize their ideal in a belief and in rules of conduct accepted by
other men. All the founders of great religions were inventors of this
kind. Whether the invention comes from themselves alone, or from a
collectivity of which they are the sum and incarnation, matters little.
In them moral invention has found its complete form; like all invention,
it is organic. The legend relates that Buddha, possessed with the desire
of finding the perfect road of salvation for himself and all other men,
gives himself up, at first, to an extravagant asceticism. He perceives
the uselessness of this and renounces it. For seven years he meditates,
then he beholds the light. He comes into possession of knowledge of the
means that give freedom from _Karma_ (the chain of causes and effects),
and from the