Understanding is basic in all questions of ethics, and in respect to social or moral ideals. If we account for our own problems, characteristics, tendencies, in the light of a principle, a law of nature such as reincarnation purports to be, then we have an element of reconciliation in our response to what happens to us. We can't be bitter over what we can account for rationally, we are not outraged by the world, and we don't accumulate hostility toward nature. If we are to have a morality which is better than custom, then, we are invited to re-examine what we regard as good and evil, right and wrong. We must question our tendency to condemn others, for each individual is a soul in evolution who brings with him a certain psycho-moral heritage, as well as a physical heritage, from his parents.
Moral law is natural law.
Yet we inherit the traditional Christian conception of the origin of things, which is plainly at odds with the scientific conception. The ancient Greeks, the philosophers who antedated the Christian epoch, regarded the whole universe as a kind of living atom. They saw life everywhere. It is fair to say that before modern science was born in the seventeenth century, there was no longer nature alive and breathing, but only the raw material which the Creator had marked with his will. The theologians preferred to have all vigor, all enterprise, all intelligence, the private possession of God.