There are dissentients--some, who, not dissenting to the chief gods, yet conjecture that the good and bad _spirits_ merely symbolize good and bad propensities in human nature. But real objectors are few and timid, afraid of punishment--if not here, then after death. For the Superstition so long rooted has engrafted its terrors in the very blood, and men are born with the _Horror_ in them; they can never free themselves from it. A few, however, do dissent; but, like our _Literati_, they do not care to oppose vulgar ignorance openly, nor is it safe; they feel a contempt, but repress its too-marked expression. "Why render themselves uselessly odious?" they say. The Priests, very likely, often disbelieve much of what they say; but not unlikely their emoluments (_livings_) have some effect upon their conduct, though not upon their private convictions. In our Flowery Land there is a maxim: "A common man's brain is in his belly." I have had a High Bonze say to me, when I have suggested some objections, "Oh, we do not know anything about such things; the morality is good, and we need a devil for women, children, and the common people: it is safer to let things alone." "But," I have rejoined, "_Is_ it quite well, in the long run, to teach falsely?" "I do not say it is well to teach _falsely_. I said, I do not know--who does? Men more learned than I believe strongly, men wiser than I have "gone to the stake and perished by slow torture of fire," made _martyrs_ (we have no such word) of themselves, rather than deny these things. They were probably right. I simply take things as they are." "But," I replied, "surely misguided fanaticism, of which the world is full, is proof of nothing whatever, unless of the sincerity of the madman--not always of that." "My dear Ah-Chin, you are very quick, and no fool (I beg pardon), but you do not understand it. The Superstitious parts are mere forms; and as to the _horrors_, as you call them, I think them indispensable; they are better than the Police." (The Police are the officers who arrest offenders in the streets and public places.)