e of the present. Thou art then to understand,
that the world had no beginning, and that men, properly speaking, never
die: the soul only breaks loose from the body in which it was confined,
and while that body is rotting under ground, is looking out for another
fresh and vigorous habitation, wherein we are born again, sometimes in
the nobler, sometimes in the more imperfect sex, according to the various
constellations of the heavens, and the different aspects of the moon.
These alterations in our birth produce the like changes in our fortune.
Now, it is the recompence of those who have lived virtuously, to preserve
a constant memory of all the lives which they have passed through, in so
many ages; and to represent themselves, to themselves, entirely, such as
they have been from all eternity, under the figure of a prince, of a
merchant, of a scholar, of a soldier, and so many other various forms: on
the contrary, they who, like thee, are so ignorant of their own affairs,
as not to understand who, or what they have been formerly, during those
infinite revolutions of ages, shew that their crimes have deserved death,
as often as they have lost the remembrance of their Jives in every
change."

The Portuguese, from whose relation we have the knowledge of what is
above written, and who was present at the dispute, as he himself informs
us, in his book of Travels, gives us no account of the answers which were
made by Xavier. "I have neither knowledge nor presumption enough," says
he, "to relate those subtile and solid reasons, with which he confuted
the mad imaginations of the Bonza." We only have learnt from this
Portuguese, that Fucarandono was put to silence upon the point in
question, and that, a little to save his reputation, he changed the
subject, but to no purpose, for even there too he was confounded; for,
forgetting those decencies which even nature prescribes to men, and
common custom has taught us in civil conversation, he advanced infamous
propositions, which cannot be related without offending modesty; and
these he maintained with a strange impudence, against the reasons of the
Father, though the king and the noble auditory thought the Christian
arguments convincing. But the Bonza still flying out into passion, and
continuing to rail and bawl aloud, as if he were rather in a bear-garden
than at a solemn disputation, one of the lords there present said,
smiling, to him, "If your business be fighting, why did not you