,
Brahma revealed himself to his faithful servant. From that moment on,
Siddhartha was called Buddha and he was revered as the Enlightened One
who had come to save men from their unhappy mortal fate.

The last forty-five years of his life, Buddha spent within the valley of
the Ganges River, teaching his simple lesson of submission and meekness
unto all men. In the year 488 before our era, he died, full of years and
beloved by millions of people. He had not preached his doctrines for the
benefit of a single class. Even the lowest Pariah might call himself his
disciple.

This, however, did not please the nobles and the priests and the
merchants who did their best to destroy a creed which recognised the
equality of all living creatures and offered men the hope of a second
life (a reincarnation) under happier circumstances. As soon as they
could, they encouraged the people of India to return to the ancient
doctrines of the Brahmin creed with its fasting and its tortures of the
sinful body. But Buddhism could not be destroyed. Slowly the disciples
of the Enlightened One wandered across the valleys of the Himalayas, and
moved into China. They crossed the Yellow Sea and preached the wisdom
of their master unto the people of Japan, and they faithfully obeyed the
will of their great master, who had forbidden them to use force. To-day
more people recognise Buddha as their teacher than ever before and their
number surpasses that of the combined followers of Christ and Mohammed.

As for Confucius, the wise old man of the Chinese, his story is a simple
one. He was born in the year 550 B.C. He led a quiet, dignified and
uneventful life at a time when China was without a strong central
government and when the Chinese people were at the mercy of bandits and
robber-barons who went from city to city, pillaging and stealing and
murdering and turning the busy plains of northern and central China into
a wilderness of starving people.

Confucius, who loved his people, tried to save them. He did not have
much faith in the use of violence. He was a very peaceful person. He
did not think that he could make people over by giving them a lot of new
laws. He knew that the only possible salvation would come from a change
of heart, and he set out upon the seemingly hopeless task of changing
the character of his millions of fellow men who inhabited the wide
plains of eastern Asia. The Chinese had never been much interested in
religion as we unders