* Whatever the advocates for the philosophy and civilization of the Turks may assert, to make war upon infidels is considered by them as an obligatory precept and an act of religion.  See Reland de Relig.  Mahom.

At these words an involuntary smile was seen on all their lips; and the various groups, reasoning on these articles of faith, exclaimed with one voice: 

“Is it possible that reasonable beings can admit such reveries?  Would you not think it a chapter from The Thousand and One Nights?”

A Samoyede advanced into the circle:  “The paradise of Mahomet,” said he, “appears to me very good; but one of the means of gaining it is embarrassing:  for if we must neither eat nor drink between the rising and setting sun, as he has ordered, how are we to practise that fast in my country, where the sun continues above the horizon six months without setting?”

“That is impossible,” cried all the Mussulman doctors, to support the teaching of the prophet; but a hundred nations having attested the fact, the infallibility of Mahomet could not but receive a severe shock.

“It is singular,” said an European, “that God should be constantly revealing what takes place in heaven, without ever instructing us what is doing on the earth.”

“For my part,” said an American, “I find a great difficulty in the pilgrimage.  For suppose twenty-five years to a generation, and only a hundred millions of males on the globe,—­each being obliged to go to Mecca once in his life,—­there must be four millions a year on the journey; and as it would be impracticable for them to return the same year, the numbers would be doubled—­that is, eight millions:  where would you find provisions, lodgings, water, vessels, for this universal procession?  Here must be miracles indeed!”

“The proof,” said a catholic doctor, “that the religion of Mahomet is not revealed, is that the greater part of the ideas which serve for its basis existed a long time before, and that it is only a confused mixture of truths disfigured and taken from our holy religion and from that of the Jews; which an ambitious man has made to serve his projects of domination, and his worldly views.  Look through his book; you will see nothing there but the histories of the Bible and the Gospel travestied into absurd fables—­into a tissue of vague and contradictory declamations, and ridiculous or dangerous precepts.

“Analyze the spirit of these precepts, and the conduct of their apostle; you will find there an artful and audacious character, which, to obtain its end, works ably it is true, on the passions of the people it had to govern.  It is speaking to simple men, and it entertains them with miracles; they are ignorant and jealous, and it flatters their vanity by despising science; they are poor and rapacious, and it excites their cupidity by the hope of pillage; having nothing at first to give them on earth, it tells them of treasures in heaven; it teaches them to desire death as a supreme good; it threatens cowards with hell; it rewards the brave with paradise; it sustains the weak with the opinion of fatality; in short, it produces the attachment it wants by all the allurements of sense, and all the power of the passions.