Lucian differs from Voltaire in having less purpose and no definite principles. He had no design to overthrow religion in favour of something else; it is merely that the absurdity of it provoked him, and he enjoyed saying aloud, and with all the vigour of reckless wit, that religious belief was silly. If the effect was scepticism, it was a scepticism founded, not on {213} philosophy, but on the off-hand judgment of what is called common-sense. Hidden meanings and mysteries were to him nonsense. How little he was qualified to understand mysticism and religious enthusiasm, can be seen in his account of the self-immolation of Peregrinus on his pyre at the Olympian games[43]--perhaps the most insufficient thing he ever wrote, full of value as it is. Peregrinus was a wanderer among the religions of the age. Gellius--who often heard him at Athens, calls him a man _gravis atque constans_, and says he spoke much that was useful and honest. He quotes in his way a paragraph of a discourse on sin, which does not lack moral elevation.[44] To Lucian the man was a quack, an advertiser, a mountebank, who burnt himself to death merely to attract notice. Lucian says he witnessed the affair, and tells gaily how, among other jests, he imposed a pretty miracle of his own invention upon the credulous. He had taken no pains to understand the man--nor did he to understand either the religious temper in general, or the philosophic, or anything else. His habit of handling things easily and lightly did not help him to see what could not be taken in at a glance.