religious lie and false pretence are held up as a virtue worthy of imitation, and a meritorious example! This perversity, this vice, I might say, is as incomprehensible to the thoughtful mind as it is unworthy of, and humiliating amid, the much vaunted achievements of Western civilisation. In the circles where these despicable notions are tolerated and extolled as worthy of imitation we hear most of the mighty influence exercised by religion upon the social status of humanity, while it is asserted that the world without this moral police could not exist, because society, even in its lowest state--the savage state--could not exist without its fetish and totem. During my many years' intercourse with people of various religions, living amongst them in the incognito of Catholic, Protestant, Sunnite, Shiite, and for a short time also as Parsi, I have come to the conclusion that religion offers but little security against moral deterioration, and that it is not seemly for the spirit of the twentieth century to take example by the customs and doings of savages. Not only Lombroso, but many other thinkers, have clearly proved that the majority of criminals are religiously disposed, and that, for instance, the robber-murderer in Spain, before setting to his work, offers a prayer to his patron saint, St. James. In Asia I have noticed the same thing. The most cruel and unprincipled Turkoman robbers were always the first, before setting out on a marauding expedition, to beg from me, the supposed Sheikh, or from some other pious man, a Fatiha (blessing). In the towns of Central Asia, Persia, and Turkey I have found in the thickly-turbaned men of God some of the most consummate villains and criminals, while the plain Osbeg and Osmanli, who only knows religion in its external form, shows himself a man full of generosity and goodness of heart. In all the Islamic world Mecca and Medina are known as the most loathsome pools of wickedness and vice. Theft, murder, and prostitution flourish there most wantonly. I have noticed the same in the large pilgrim haunts, Meshed and Kum, and it is a well-known saying, "He who wants to forsake his Christianity should make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem or Rome." With us in Europe the relation between morality and religion is a similar one, and how it is possible that, in the face of the revealed facts, states and societies give themselves the trouble to discover in religion a panacea against vice and a standard of morality must remain a mystery to any thinking man.