It is really the philosophy of religion, the kernel of all its outward forms. All forms of religion have an essential and a nonessential part. If we strip from them the latter, there remains the real basis of all religion, which all forms of religion possess in common. Unity is behind them all. We may call it God, Allah, Jehovah, the Spirit, Love; it is the same unity that animates all life, from its lowest form to its noblest manifestation in human beings. It is on this unity that we need to lay stress, whereas in the West, and indeed everywhere, it is the nonessential that people are apt to lay stress. They will fight and kill each other for these forms, to make their fellows conform. Seeing that the essential is love of God and love of human beings, this is curious, to say the least.
Interview. London, 1896. Complete Works, 5: 197.
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