Almoran, who, since the death of his father, had nothing to apprehend from the discovery of sentiments which before he had been careful to conceal; now urged his objections against religion, when Omar gave him opportunity, without reserve.  ‘You tell me,’ says he, ’of beings that are immortal, because they are immaterial; beings which do not consist of parts, and which, therefore, can admit no solution, the only natural cause of corruption and decay:  but that which is not material, can have no extension; and what has no extension, possesses no space; and of such beings, the mind itself, which you pretend to be such a being, has no conception.’

‘If the mind,’ says Omar, ’can perceive that there is in itself any single, property of such a being, it has irrefragable evidence that it is such a being; though its mode of existence, as distinct from matter, cannot now be comprehended.’  ‘And what property of such a being,’ said Almoran, ‘does the mind of man perceive in itself?’ ’That of acting, said Omar, ’without motion.  You have no idea, that a material substance can act, but in proportion as it moves:  yet to think, is to act; and with the idea of thinking, the idea of motion is never connected:  on the contrary, we always conceive the mind to be fixed, in proportion to the degree of ardour and intenseness with which the power of thinking is exerted.  Now, if that which is material cannot act without motion; and if man is conscious, that to think, is to act and not to move; it follows, that there is, in man, somewhat that is not matter; somewhat that has no extension, and that possesses no space; somewhat which, having no contexture or parts that can be dissolved or separated, is exempted from all the natural causes of decay.’

Omar paused; and Almoran having stood some moments without reply, he seized this opportunity to impress him with an awful sense of the power and presence of the Supreme and Eternal Being, from whom his own existence was derived:  ‘Let us remember,’ said he, ’that to every act of this immaterial and immortal part, the Father of spirits, from whom it proceeds, is present:  when I behold the busy multitudes that crowd the metropolis of Persia, in the persuit of business and projects infinitely complicated and various; and consider that every idea which passes over their minds, every conclusion, and every purpose, with all that they remember of the past, and all that they imagine of the future, is at once known to the Almighty, who without labour or confusion weighs every thought of every mind in His balance, and reserves it to the day of retribution; my follies cover me with confusion, and my soul is humbled in the dust.’

Almoran, though he appeared to listen with attention, and offered nothing against the reasoning of Omar, yet secretly despised it as sophistry; which cunning only had rendered specious; and which he was unable to confute, merely because it was subtil, and not because it was true:  he had been led, by his passions, first to love, and then to adopt different opinions; and as every man is inclined to judge of others by himself, he doubted, whether the principles which Omar had thus laboured to establish; were believed even by Omar himself.