One who makes such disclosures is, or is regarded as, an enemy to society. Hence Socrates was ordered to drink the hemlock because he was an ethical philosopher, and not an advocate of traditional morality. Theosophy proposes that the ground of universal brotherhood is an identity of being in essence, and it pursues this idea by pointing to the fact that all men have in common the quality of self-consciousness, which is the root of our identity. Comprehension, however, replaces sentiment with understanding. We are willing to enter in, to identify ourselves with them, seeing the processes which explain what they do.
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.