ABSTRACT
Rightly understood, the Golden Rule affirms that all men have an equal claim with us to well-being. Carefully pondered, the Golden Rule is seen to be eminently sane and practical. Vengeance can be thought of in connection only with an enemy ; so that the command to love our neighbour becomes a command to love our enemy. The Talmudic doctrine is equally broad. All men are brothers, members of the same human family, sons of the same Heavenly Father. A distinction is sometimes drawn between justice and love, and the Pentateuch, which insists so strongly upon the grandeur of justice, is declared to have been properly superseded by the teaching of the Christian Scriptures which make the gentler virtue the exclusive ideal. Philanthropy and self-love are identical. For true self-love means self-realisation in the higher sense; it means the development of our best capacities.
