“Well, I think that is the culmination of scrupulosity. I am glad such phenomenal squeamishness does not exist on this planet.” “I do not defend it nor approve of it,” he replied, “any more than you do. But still I think your complacent congratulations of your own race rather out of place. You are quite as much under the dominion of indefensible ideas as we. For example, you have an ancient book whose doctrines and precepts you think you must accept and obey whether they are agreeable and suitable or not, although the men who gave them, have been dead two or three thousand years, while scarcely two of you agree as to what the precepts are and each generation has a different interpretation of them. You have a sect that believe that your Deity is mortally offended with all who do not submit to be immersed under water, while others think he will be satisfied with their having a few drops sprinkled on the face. You have sects that believe your Deity is greatly displeased to see people hopping around on their legs, or dancing as you call it, while one sect employ dancing as the most satisfactory mode of worshipping him. You have a sect that believe that pictures, music and ornaments, and coats with collars that turn down are offensive to the Deity, and who think he is best pleased with silent worship, while others think he likes to be flattered in loud speeches and louder songs addressed to himself, and that he is indifferent whether coat collars stand up or lie down. You have a sect that believe that buttons on the clothes are offensive to him and who therefore fasten their clothing with hooks and eyes. All these sects and many more equally absurd, get their various contradictory notions from the same book, and they adhere to them with such tenacity that in many cases they would die rather than give them up and would if they dared, murder other people for not accepting them, and in times past have done so in thousands of instances. In former times it was a common opinion, that your Deity had an arch enemy called the Devil, who opposed, bothered and thwarted him in the most provoking manner, and among other things inspired and aided thousands of unattractive old women to turn themselves into wolves, cats and other beasts and to become witches, and in these conditions to attack and injure their neighbors and bring strange diseases upon them. For these offenses these old women were judged by your sacred books and were burnt by the thousand. And yet many of the men of this generation, while still holding to the sacred books, have not only repudiated witchcraft, but even the devil himself, and an attempt to burn a witch would now be met by an insurrection. Then you have a sect, or a nation rather, of people, who claim that they are the peculiar favorites of your Deity, who chose them from among all the nations and set them apart as his own, and ordered them to practice a certain peculiar mutilation on the bodies