Brahmins.
Their rites, their pagodas, prove that among them everything was
allegorical; they still represent virtue beneath the emblem of a woman
who has ten arms, and who combats ten mortal sins represented by
monsters. Our missionaries have not failed to take this image of virtue
for that of the devil, and to assure us that the devil is worshipped in
India. We have never been among these people but to enrich ourselves and
to calumniate them.

Really we have forgotten a very essential thing in this little article
on the Brahmins; it is that their sacred books are filled with
contradictions. But the people do not know of them, and the doctors have
solutions ready, figurative meanings, allegories, symbols, express
declarations of Birma, Brahma and Vitsnou, which should close the mouths
of all who reason.

_CHARACTER_

From the Greek word _impression_, _engraving_.

It is what nature has graved in us.

Can one change one's character? Yes, if one changes one's body. It is
possible for a man born blunderer, unbending and violent, being stricken
with apoplexy in his old age, to become a foolish, tearful child, timid
and peaceable. His body is no longer the same. But as long as his
nerves, his blood and his marrow are in the same state, his nature will
not change any more than a wolf's and a marten's instinct.

The character is composed of our ideas and our feelings: well, it is
substantiated that we give ourselves neither feelings nor ideas;
therefore our character does not depend on us.

If it depended on us, there is nobody who would not be perfect.

We cannot give ourselves tastes, talents; why should we give ourselves
qualities?

If one does not reflect, one thinks oneself master of everything; when
one reflects thereon, one sees that one is master of nothing.

Should you wish to change a man's character completely, purge him with
diluents every day until you have killed him. Charles XII., in his
suppurative fever on the road to Bender, was no longer the same man. One
prevailed upon him as upon a child.

If I have a crooked nose and two cat's eyes, I can hide them with a
mask. Can I do more with the character which nature has given me?

A man born violent, hasty, presented himself before Francois I., King of
France, to complain of an injustice; the prince's countenance, the
respectful bearing of the courtiers, the very place where he is, make a
powerful impression on this man; mechanically he lowe