This is perhaps the prize to be gained, not by one mortal, but by a series of generations, in a laborious task, so often interrupted and recommenced, but never abandoned. The struggle of the human mind is without term, but not without aim. We see two principal movers of human intellect――PHILOSOPHY and RELIGION. The one employs reason as a sufficient power for the solution of a solvable problem, which comprehends knowledge, morality, and civilisation. The other distrusts reason, and relies upon a supernatural power for the revelation of a secret, or for the word of an enigma, which relates to a destination beyond the bounds of this world. The philosopher, self-confident, is liable to error for various reasons; but always capable of correction and improvement, in the only possible way, that of self-activity, the virtuous exertions of his faculties towards attainable perfection in his whole condition. The religionist is exposed to deception by his gratuitous faith in superhuman guidance, and, if mistaken, is precluded from regress and improvement by his essential virtue, fidelity; that is, the pious surrender of his soul to a spiritual and mystical sovereignty. The Dabistán shows us more religionists than philosophers; it is the school of sects, or rather that of inveterate superstition, with which, in spite of the correctives which human nature affords to its errors, the general character of the Asiatics remains stamped, from time immemorial to the present day. Although the twelve chapters of the Dabistán bear the titles of as many religions, the author says himself, at the end of his work, that there are only _five_ great religions――those of the Hindus, Persians, Jews, Nazareans, and Muselmans. He no where mentions the Egyptians nor the Chinese, apparently because, in his times and long before, no trace of the Egyptian religion existed, although it certainly had once occupied a great circle of influence, and because the Chinese creed was known to be Buddhism.