of virtue.

"Thus, then, an invisible and imaginary world entered into competition
with that which was real. Such, O Persians! was the origin of your
renovated earth, your city of resurrection, placed under the equator,
and distinguished from all other cities by this singular attribute,
that the bodies of its inhabitants cast no shade. Such, O Jews and
Christians! disciples of the Persians, was the source of your New
Jerusalem, your paradise and your heaven, modelled upon the astrological
heaven of Hermes. Meanwhile your hell, O ye Musselmans! a subterraneous
pit surmounted by a bridge, your balance of souls and good works,
your judgment pronounced by the angels Monkir and Nekir, derives its
attributes from the mysterious ceremonies of the cave of Mithra; and
your heaven is exactly coincident with that of Osiris, Ormuzd, and
Brama."....

"It is evident, that it is not truth for which you contend; that it is
not her cause you are jealous of maintaining, but the cause of your own
passions and prejudices; that it is not the object as it really exists
that you wish to verify, but the object as it appears to you; that it is
not the evidence of the thing that you are anxious should prevail, but
your personal opinion, your mode of seeing and judging. There is a power
that you want to exercise, an interest that you want to maintain, a
prerogative that you want to assume: in short, the whole is a struggle
of vanity. And as every individual, when he compares himself with every
other, finds himself to be his equal and fellow, he resists by a similar
feeling of right; and from this right, which you all deny to each
other, and from the inherent consciousness of your equality, spring your
disputes, your combats, and your intolerance.

"Now the only way of restoring unanimity is by returning to nature, and
taking the order of things which she has established for your director
and guide, and this farther truth will then appear from your uniformity
of sentiment.

"If we would arrive at uniformity of opinion, we must previously
establish certainty, and verify the resemblance which our ideas have
to their models. Now, this can nut be obtained, except so far as the
objects of our inquiry can be referred to the testimony, and subjected
to the examination of our senses. Whatever cannot be brought to this,
trial is beyond the limits of our understanding: we have neither rule to
try it by, nor measure by which to institute a comparison, no