ibed programme?"

"We have many similar festivals in the year," answered the lama, "and we
arrange particular ones to represent 'mysteries,' susceptible of
pantomimic presentation, in which each actor is allowed considerable
latitude of action, in the movements and jests he likes, conforming,
nevertheless, to the circumstances and to the leading idea. Our
mysteries are simply pantomimes calculated to show the veneration
offered to the gods, which veneration sustains and cheers the soul of
man, who is prone to anxious contemplation of inevitable death and the
life to come. The actors receive the dresses from the cloister and they
play according to general indications, which leave them much liberty of
individual action. The general effect produced is, no doubt, very
beautiful, but it is a matter for the spectators themselves to divine
the signification of one or another action. You, too, have recourse
sometimes to similar devices, which, however, do not in the least
violate the principle of monotheism."

"Pardon me," I remarked, "but this multitude of idols with which your
gonpas abound, is a flagrant violation of that principle."

"As I have told you," replied the lama to my interruption, "man will
always be in childhood. He sees and feels the grandeur of nature and
understands everything presented to his senses, but he neither sees nor
divines the Great Soul which created and animates all things. Man has
always sought for tangible things. It was not possible for him to
believe long in that which escaped his material senses. He has racked
his brain for any means for contemplating the Creator; has endeavored to
enter into direct relations with him who has done him so much good, and
also, as he erroneously believes, so much evil. For this reason he began
to adore every phase of nature from which he received benefits. We see a
striking example of this in the ancient Egyptians, who adored animals,
trees, stones, the winds and the rain. Other peoples, who were more
sunk in ignorance, seeing that the results of the wind were not always
beneficent, and that the rain did not inevitably bring good harvests,
and that the animals were not willingly subservient to man, began to
seek for direct intermediaries between themselves and the great
mysterious and unfathomable power of the Creator. Therefore they made
for themselves idols, which they regarded as indifferent to things
concerning them, but to whose interposition in their beh