Note 309 — Chapter VIII · THE ETHICS OF ZOROASTRIANISM: AN IDEAL OF COMBAT

Zoroastrian ethics, as Wedgwood says, is best understood when viewed as a protest against the Hindu conception of the universe and life. “The injunction to industry, the elaborate provisions for agriculture, the constant stimulus to exertion of every kind, are most intelligible when we see in them a recoil from the faith which appeared to this active race [the Iranian] a confusion of good and evil” (The Moral Ideal, 3d ed., p. 59).