Christian philosophy,
which teaches that God has created nothing new since he rested."

"But it could have existed _in potentia_ and not _in actu_," [54]
observed Don Filipo.

"Very well! But yet I must answer that some knew of it and as existing
_in actu_. One of these was Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, who wrote
part of the Zend-Avesta and founded a religion which in some points
resembles ours, and Zarathustra, according to the scholars, flourished
at least eight hundred years before Christ. I say 'at least,' since
Gaffarel, after examining the testimony of Plato, Xanthus of Lydia,
Pliny, Hermippus, and Eudoxus, believes it to have been two thousand
five hundred years before our era. However that may be, it is certain
that Zarathustra talked of a kind of purgatory and showed ways of
getting free from it. The living could redeem the souls of those who
died in sin by reciting passages from the Avesta and by doing good
works, but under the condition that the person offering the petitions
should be a relative, up to the fourth generation. The time for this
occurred every year and lasted five days. Later, when this belief had
become fixed among the people, the priests of that religion saw in it a
chance of profit and so they exploited 'the deep and dark prison where
remorse reigns,' as Zarathustra called it. They declared that by the
payment of a small coin it was possible to save a soul from a year of
torture, but as in that religion there were sins punishable by three
hundred to a thousand years of suffering, such as lying, faithlessness,
failure to keep one's word, and so on, it resulted that the rascals
took in countless sums. Here you will observe something like our
purgatory, if you take into account the differences in the religions."

A vivid flash of lightning, followed by rolling thunder, caused Doray
to start up and exclaim, as she crossed herself: "_Jesus, Maria,
y Jose!_ I'm going to leave you, I'm going to burn some sacred palm
and light candles of penitence."

The rain began to fall in torrents. The Sage Tasio, watching the young
woman leave, continued: "Now that she is not here, we can consider this
matter more rationally. Doray, even though a little superstitious,
is a good Catholic, and I don't care to root out the faith from her
heart. A pure and simple faith is as distinct from fanaticism as the
flame from smoke or music from discords: only the fools and the deaf
confuse them. Between ourselves we can s