Is it not better than the "love one another," of Jesus, which really meant, "love only your fellow-believer"? Jesus declared that it will be worse for those who rejected him and his apostles, on the last day, than for Sodom and Gomorrah, which were consumed by fire from heaven.
What good man will look on any suffering as foreign to himself?—Juvenal.
The Universe is but a great city; never, in reply to the question to what country you belong, say you are an Athenian, or a Corinthian, but say you are a Cosmopolitan—a citizen of the world.—Epictetus. *
* Discourses i, 9.
But it was not only in their universalism that the
European writers excelled the Asiatic seers and miracle-workers. It has been persistently claimed that both love and justice are exclusively biblical virtues. We regret to say that this is another untruth, the extensive circulation of which was deemed necessary to protect the bible against its rivals.
Love is the foundation of the law.—Cicero.
Sympathy is what distinguishes us from brutes.—Juvenal.
The love of all to all.—Pythagoras.
He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it. It is never right to return an injury. — Plato.