ould do so, the mightiest secrets
which the soul of man is fitted to receive; it is the enigma of life
itself that you desire me to solve. Placed like children in the dark,
and but for a little while, in this dim and confined existence, we shape
our spectres in the obscurity; our thoughts now sink back into ourselves
in terror, now wildly plunge themselves into the guideless gloom,
guessing what it may contain; stretching our helpless hands here and
there, lest, blindly, we stumble upon some hidden danger; not knowing
the limits of our boundary, now feeling them suffocate us with
compression, now seeing them extend far away till they vanish into
eternity. In this state all wisdom consists necessarily in the solution
of two questions: "What are we to believe? and What are we to reject?"
These questions you desire me to decide.'

Apaecides bowed his head in assent.

'Man must have some belief,' continued the Egyptian, in a tone of
sadness. 'He must fasten his hope to something: is our common nature
that you inherit when, aghast and terrified to see that in which you
have been taught to place your faith swept away, you float over a dreary
and shoreless sea of incertitude, you cry for help, you ask for some
plank to cling to, some land, however dim and distant, to attain. Well,
then, have not forgotten our conversation of to-day?'

'Forgotten!'

'I confessed to you that those deities for whom smoke so many altars
were but inventions. I confessed to you that our rites and ceremonies
were but mummeries, to delude and lure the herd to their proper good. I
explained to you that from those delusions came the bonds of society,
the harmony of the world, the power of the wise; that power is in the
obedience of the vulgar. Continue we then these salutary delusions--if
man must have some belief, continue to him that which his fathers have
made dear to him, and which custom sanctifies and strengthens. In
seeking a subtler faith for us, whose senses are too spiritual for the
gross one, let us leave others that support which crumbles from
ourselves. This is wise--it is benevolent.'

'Proceed.'

'This being settled,' resumed the Egyptian, 'the old landmarks being
left uninjured for those whom we are about to desert, we gird up our
loins and depart to new climes of faith. Dismiss at once from your
recollection, from your thought, all that you have believed before.
Suppose the mind a blank, an unwritten scroll, fit to receiv