"Sometimes you may find a man skilful in his trade," says the Author, "perfect in sagacity and in the use of arguments, but when he comes to religion he is found obstinate, so does he follow in the old groove. Piety is implanted in human nature; it is deemed a sure refuge. To the growing child, that which falls from his elders' lips is a lesson that abides with him all his life. Monks in their cloisters and devotees in their mosques accept their creed just as a story is handed down from him who tells it, without distinguishing between a true interpreter and a false. If one of these had found his kin among the Magians, or among the Sabians, he would have become nearly or quite like them." It does seem, too, that the strain of heterodoxy in Abu'l-Ala is partly hereditary. His father, who was also a poet of some distinction, and his maternal uncle, were both noted for their liberal opinions in religious matters. And he himself, alluding in one of his poems to those who reproached him for not making the pilgrimage to Mecca, says that neither his father, nor his cousin, nor his uncle had pilgrimaged at all, and that he will not be denied forgiveness, if they are forgiven. And if they are not, he had as lief share their fate. But aside from his prose writings, in which, do what we may, we can not explain away his supposed heresies, we find in the Luzumiyat themselves his dominant ideas on religion, for instance, being a superstition; wine, an unmitigated evil; virtue, its own reward; the cremation of the dead, a virtue; the slaughter or even the torture of animals a crime; [20] doubt, a way to truth; reason, the only prophet and guide;--we find these ideas clothed in various images and expressed in varied forms, but unmistakable in whatever guise we find them. Here, for instance, is Professor Nicholson's almost literal translation of a quatrain from the Luzumiyat: Hanifs [21] are stumbling, Christians gone astray, Jews wildered, Magians far on error's way:-- We mortals are composed of two great schools, Enlightened knaves or else religious fools. And here is the same idea, done in a large picture. The translation, literal too, is mine: 'Tis strange that Kusrah and his people wash Their faces in the staling of the kine; And that the Christians say, Almighty God Was tortured, mocked, and crucified in fine: And that the Jews should picture Him as one Who loves the odor of a roasting chine; And stranger still that Muslems travel far To kiss a black stone said to be divine:-- Almighty God! will all the human race Stray blindly from the Truth's most sacred shrine? [22]