wealth and goods by theft.”  “How did you manage it, when in the eye of the people you are still irreproachably honest and no one suspects you?” “By means of an artifice in the science of thieving:  it is so handy and easy that no one can have any suspicion whatever.”  “How so?” “I used to manage this way:  On a moonlight night I would go out with my companions, get up to the roof of the house of the person I wanted to rob as far as the sky light through which the moon shone and then uttered seven times the charm Sholam Sholam Sholam.  I would then embrace the rays and slide down into the house without any body noticing my intrusion.  Then at the other extremity of the moon-beams I again would seven times repeat the magic word and all the money and treasures in the house became visible to me.  I could take of them whatever I would.  Once more I would embrace the beams and rehearsing again seven times the magic word mount up to my companions and load them with all I had.  Next we stole away unscathed.”

When the robbers overheard this they rejoiced exceedingly and said:  “In this house we have got a spoil which is more valuable to us than the gold which we can get there; we have acquired a means by which God delivers us from fear and we are secure against the authorities.”  So they watched for a long time and when they had made sure that the master of the house and his wife had gone to sleep the leader of the robbers stepped up to the spot where the light streamed through the hole, spoke Sholam Sholam seven times, clasped the rays with the intention of dropping down along them and fell head foremost on the floor.  The husband sprang to his feet with a club and thrashed him to a jelly asking him, “Who are you?” And he replied, “The deceived believer:  this is the fruit of blind faith.”

[Sidenote:  More religious investigation and more despair.]

[Sidenote:  A dilemma.]

Accordingly, after I had grown sufficiently circumspect not to credit what might probably lead to my perdition, I started again investigating religions to discover the true one.  But I again found no reply whenever I put questions to any one and when a doctrine was propounded to me I found nothing which in my judgment merited belief or served me as a guiding principle.  Then I said, “The most reasonable course is to cling to the religion in which I found my fathers.”  Yet when I sought justification for this course I found none and said to myself, “If that be justification then the sorcerer also had one who found his progenitors to be wizards.”  And I thought of the man who ate indecently and when he was rebuked for it he excused himself by saying that his ancestors used to feed in the same gross way.  Since, therefore, it was impossible for me to keep to the religion of my forbears and since I could find no justification for it, I desired once more earnestly to bestir myself and most carefully to examine the various religions and to consider minutely what they had to offer us.  But then suddenly the idea struck me that the end was near and that the world would presently come to a close for me.  Thereupon I pondered as follows:—­