Making due allowance for certain extremes to which his followers sometimes carried his doctrines, it can be stated that Mani merely revived the old Persian myth of the Good God and the Evil God who are eternally fighting for the soul of man and that he associated the ancient God of Evil with the Jehovah of the Old Testament (who thus became his Devil) and the God of All Good Things with that Heavenly Father whom we find revealed within the pages of the Four Gospels. Furthermore (and that is where Buddhistic influence made itself felt) Mani believed that the body of man was by nature a vile and despicable thing; that all people should try to rid themselves of their worldly ambitions by the constant mortification of the flesh and should obey the strictest rules of diet and behavior lest they fall into the clutches of the Evil God (the Devil) and burn in Hell. As a result he revived a large number of taboos about things that must not be eaten or drunk and prescribed for his followers a menu composed exclusively of cold water, dried vegetables and dead fish. This latter ordinance may surprise us, but the inhabitants of the sea, being cold-blooded animals, have always been regarded as less harmful to man’s immortal soul than their warm-blooded brethren of the dry land, and the self-same people who would rather suffer death than eat a veal chop cheerfully consume quantities of fish and never feel a qualm of conscience. Mani showed himself a true Oriental in his contempt for women. He forbade his disciples to marry and advocated the slow extinction of the human race. As for baptism and the other ceremonies instituted originally by the Jewish sect of which John the Baptist had been the exponent, Mani regarded them all with horror and instead of being submerged in water, his candidates for holy orders were initiated by the laying on of hands. At the age of twenty-five, this strange man undertook to explain his ideas unto all mankind. First he visited India and China where he was fairly successful. Then he turned homeward to bring the blessings of his creed to his own neighbors. But the Persian priests who began to find themselves deprived of much secret revenue by the success of these unworldly doctrines turned against him and asked that he be killed. In the beginning, Mani enjoyed the protection of the king, but when this sovereign died and was succeeded by some one else who had no interest whatsoever in religious questions, Mani was surrendered to the priestly class. They took him to the walls of the town and crucified him and flayed his corpse and publicly exposed his skin before the city gate as an example to all those who might feel inclined to take an interest in the heresies of the Ecbatanian prophet.