probability in the fiction, destroys the charm, breaks
the spell by which we have been so mysteriously bound, stops the
smooth current of sympathetic emotion, and restores us to reason and
to the realities of ordinary life. With the Hindoos, on the contrary,
the greater the improbability, the more monstrous and preposterous
the fiction, the greater is the charm it has over their minds;[9] and
the greater their learning in the Sanskrit the more are they under
the influence of this charm. Believing all to be written by the
Deity, or by his inspiration, and the men and things of former days
to have been very different from the men and things of the present
day, and the heroes of these fables to have been demigods, or people
endowed with powers far superior to those of the ordinary men of
their own day, the analogies of nature are never for a moment
considered; nor do questions of probability, or possibility,
according to those analogies, ever obtrude to dispel the charm with
which they are so pleasingly bound. They go on through life reading
and talking of these monstrous fictions, which shock the taste and
understanding of other nations, without once questioning the truth of
one single incident, or hearing it questioned. There was a time, and
that not very distant, when it was the same in England, and in every
other European nation; and there are, I am afraid, some parts of
Europe where it is so still. But the Hindoo faith, so far as
religious questions are concerned, is not more capacious or absurd
than that of the Greeks and Romans in the days of Socrates and
Cicero--the only difference is, that among the Hindoos a greater
number of the questions which interest mankind are brought under the
head of religion.

There is nothing in the Hindoos more absurd than the _piety_ of
Tiberius in offering up sacrifices in the temple, and before the
image of Augustus; while he was solicited by all the great cities of
the empire to suffer temples to be built and sacrifices to be made to
himself while still living; or than Alexander's attempt to make a
goddess of his mother while yet alive, that he might feel the more
secure of being made a god himself after his death.[10] In all
religions there are points at which the professors declare that
reason must stop, and cease to be a guide to faith. The pious man
thinks that all which he cannot comprehend or reconcile to reason in
his own religion must be above it. The superstitions of the