Any reading of the classics of philosophy, religious writing and spirituality from round the world reveals, almost uncannily, the extent to which a handful of ideas about human life, human nature and the good life crop up in writers from cultures and traditions as diverse as Plato and Lao Tzu, Confucius and St Augustine, the New Testament and Plato. As has often been observed, the great religions - and the great philosophers - agree on a remarkable number of issues.Psychologist Jonathan Haidt's remarkable book sets out to examine these ideas in the light of modern science - neuroscience, psychology and evolutionary biology. For example: both Plato and the Buddha (and many others) saw the human soul as existing in a state of tension between an amoral animal nature and a moral, thinking, nobler nature. Drawing on a wide range of scientific evidence, Haidt concludes that they are largely correct - though rather than accept the Buddha's analogy of a rider attempting to control a horse, he suggests that a more appropriate analogy would be a small boy on the back of an elephant, so little do we really know of how our unconscious desires and impulses control our behaviour. As revealing about the insights of modern brain science as the writings of Oliver Sacks, this is also a profoundly affecting book.