Gai Eaton contrasts the increasingly prevalent view that man is in no way essentially different from other animals and therefore has no special rights with a doctrine characteristic of several spiritual traditions: that man is unique and granted certain privileges as well as obligated to uphold certain responsibilites. He explains how man has failed to meet these responsibilites by abusing animals and other natural resources, as well as behaving harmfully towards other men. Eaton uses the destruction of American Indian civilization as the primary illustration of the latter tendency.

Hindu society prescribes a standard of purity for women that requires rigorous dedication and sacrifice. Likening the story of Sita to the Crucifixion of Christ, Iengar explains how her banishment by Rama served not only to purify the generations of women before and after her, but also to reveal the incessant pride and skepticism of man.

Lings discusses spiritual alchemy as it is affected by the seven deadly sins. By first playing with the opposite significance of the numbers seven and eight—seven representing life and holiness, eight representing death—Lings illustrates how the seven deadly sins are both holy and evil. He suggests that the sources of these sins are latent spiritual energy and when one sets out on a spiritual journey, one awakens these desires. For instance, the passion of anger is able to become holy anger as it is to become sinful anger. Lings makes the point that in the case of sincerity, the object of sincerity is just as important as the subject, for to be sincere about the wrong thing is more dangerous that general insincerity. He illustrates that the danger of the spiritual journey is that one is as likely to become a miser as one is to become a saint.

Using St. Francis of Assisi’s writings, particularly his Laudes, Frithjof Schuon emphasizes the necessary interdependence of such virtues as Simplicity, Wisdom, Charity and Purity. Focusing on the Virgin Mary, both St. Francis and Schuon illustrate the ways in which the collaboration of these virtues opens the soul as a “receptacle of the Divine Presence.” In teaching both submission to God and detachment from the world, they affirm a necessary presence in the world and connection with other people, but without dependence on temporal things and with indifference toward egoism and self-fulfillment. No one can neglect one virtue without tainting all of them, and if one finds complete acceptance of one virtue, then all others are contained within it.