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From the beginning of: CHAPTER I. THE SECRET OF THE EAST. What is that great and vital principle that underlies all Eastern faiths? What is that truth that finds so varied and so different an expression in Hinduism, Shintoism, Buddhism, and many another religion, in the philosophies of Laotze and Confucius? What is the understanding of the world that is acceptable alike to prince and peasant, to philosopher and labourer, to soldier and recluse; that is the basis of all truth? The West has sought it always. It has recognised that from the East came light, that in the East there rose a fountain of the spirit that dried up never. The West has sought, but has not found. It has never looked deep enough. It has mistaken things, taking the non-essential for the essential, the form for that which it encloses, the temporary for the eternal. It has borrowed and then has found that what it took away was but a dead thing and that the life was left behind. The East has ever been and is religious, not in part of its life but in the whole of it. It has held that religion is not of one day but of all time, not of time only but of eternity, not of eternity only but of every moment. To its mind religion embraces everything, not man's soul only but his body, all of him; and not man alone but the whole universe; not some virtue but all virtues, all that is good and all that is evil. It is not therefore a theory, a teaching, a method, nor an ideal, a dogma, a thought; for these, however great, however true, must always be narrow, cannot hold but a little part of truth. They are finite, whereas religion is infinite. It is none of these. Religion is a way of looking at life and at the universe, it is a way to see and understand.