* It frequently happens that the swine devour the very species of serpents the negroes adore, which is a source of great desolation in the country.  President de Brosses has given us, in his History of the Fetiche, a curious collection of absurdities of this nature.

** The Teleuteans, a Tartar nation, paint God as wearing a vesture of all colors, particularly red and green; and as these constitute the uniform of the Russian dragoons, they compare him to this description of soldiers.  The Egyptians also dress the God World in a garment of every color.  Eusebius Proep.  Evang. p 115.  The Teleuteans call God Bou, which is only an alteration of Boudd, the God Egg and World.

     *** Consult upon this subject a work entitled, Description
     des Peuples, soumis a la Russie, and it will be found that
     the picture is not overcharged.

But you may still behold a hundred savage nations who have none of the ideas of civilized people respecting God, the soul, another world, and a future life; who have formed no system of worship; and who nevertheless enjoy the rich gifts of nature in the irreligion in which she has created them.

CHAPTER XXI.

Problem of religious contradictions.

The various groups having taken their places, an unbounded silence succeeded to the murmurs of the multitude; and the legislator said: 

Chiefs and doctors of mankind!  You remark how the nations, living apart, have hitherto followed different paths, each believing its own to be that of truth.  If, however, truth is one, and opinions are various, it is evident that some are in error.  If, then, such vast numbers of us are in the wrong, who shall dare to say, “I am in the right?” Begin, therefore, by being indulgent in your dissensions.  Let us all seek truth as if no one possessed it.  The opinions which to this day have governed the world, originating from chance, propagated in obscurity, admitted without discussion, accredited by a love of novelty and imitation, have usurped their empire in a clandestine manner.  It is time, if they are well founded, to give a solemn stamp to their certainty, and legitimize their existence.  Let us summon them this day to a general scrutiny, let each propound his creed, let the whole assembly be the judge, and let that alone be acknowledged as true which is so for the whole human race.

Then, by order of position, the representative of the first standard on the left was allowed to speak: 

“You are not permitted to doubt,” said their chief, “that our doctrine is the only true and infallible one.  First, it is revealed by God himself—­”

“So is ours,” cried all the other standards, “and you are not permitted to doubt it.”

“But at least,” said the legislator, “you must prove it, for we cannot believe what we do not know.”