and a Hell; in a word, two distinguished abodes, constructed according to the imagination of the enthusiasts who have invented them; who have accommodated them to their own peculiar prejudices, to the hopes, to the fears of the people who believe in them. The Indian figures the first of these abodes as one of inaction, of permanent repose, because, being the inhabitant of a hot climate, he has learned to contemplate rest as the extreme of felicity: the Mussulman promises himself corporeal pleasures, similar to those that actually constitute the object of his research in this life: each figures to himself that on which he has learned to set the greatest value." "As for the miserable abode of souls, the imagination of fanatics, who were desirous of governing the people, strove to assemble the most frightful images to render it still more terrible; fire is of all things that which produces in man the most pungent sensation; not finding anything more cruel, the enemies to the several dogmas were to be everlastingly punished with this torturing element: fire, therefore, was the point at which their imagination was obliged to stop; the ministers of the various systems agreed pretty generally, that fire would one day avenge their offended divinities; thus, they painted the victims to the anger of the gods, or rather those who questioned their own creeds, as confined in fiery dungeons; as perpetually rolling into a vortex of bituminous flames; as plunged in unfathomable gulfs of liquid sulphur; making the infernal caverns resound with their useless groanings, with their unavailing gnashing of teeth. But it will, perhaps, be inquired, how could man reconcile himself to the belief of an existence accompanied with eternal torments; above all, as many according to their own superstitions had reason to fear it for themselves--Many causes have concurred to make him adopt so revolting an opinion: in the first place, very few thinking men have ever believed such an absurdity, when they have deigned to make use of their reason; or, when they have accredited it, this notion was always counterbalanced by the idea of the goodness, by a reliance on the mercy, which they attributed to their respective divinities: in the second place, those who were blinded by their fears never rendered to themselves any account of these strange doctrines which they either received with awe from their legislators, or which were transmitted to them by their fathers; in the third place, each sees the object of his terrors only at a favorable distance; moreover, superstition promises him the means of escaping the tortures he believes he has merited." We conclude by quoting the following eloquent passage:--