There is a story of a Brahman who was talking with a European of his religion, and among other dogmas mentioned the scrupulous respect due to animals. “The law,” said he “not only forbids one’s doing evil, voluntarily, to the smallest creature even for the purpose of supplying one’s self with food, it even bids one walk with extraordinary circumspection with one’s eyes down, that one may avoid stepping on the humblest ant.” Without trying to refute this naïve faith the European handed the speaker a microscope. The Brahman looked through the instrument and saw on everything about him, on the fruits that he was about to eat, in the beverage that he was about to drink, everywhere that he might put his hand or foot, the movement of a multitude of little animals of whose existence he had never dreamed: creatures that he had totally left out of account. He was stupefied and handed the microscope back to the European. “I give it to you,” the latter said. The Brahman with a movement of joy took it and threw it on the ground, and broke it, and departed satisfied; as if by that stroke he had destroyed the truth and saved his faith. Happily, in our day, one may without great loss destroy an optical or physical instrument, it can be replaced; but what is to become of an intelligence in the hands of the fanatical believer? Would he not crush it, in case of need, as the instrument of glass was crushed, and sacrifice it the more gaily that a more limpid gleam of truth might well filter through it? In India we have an example of the philosophical doctrine, very inoffensive in appearance and upheld, with various modifications, by great thinkers, of the transmigration of souls, becoming a religious dogma, producing as a direct result intolerance, contempt of science, and all the usual effects of blind dogmatism. Dogmatic and absolute faith in its every form tends to check thought; thence springs its intolerance—a consequence that may well be insisted on. [Sidenote: And even logically resulting from it.]