But how do you think, then, that my religion became established? Like all the rest. A man of strong imagination made himself followed by some persons of weak imagination. The flock increased; fanaticism commences, fraud achieves. A powerful man comes; he sees a crowd, ready bridled and with a bit in its teeth; he mounts and leads it.—_Dial, et entr. ph., Dialogue 19._ Superstition The superstitious man is to the knave what the slave is to the tyrant; nay, further, the superstitious man is governed by the fanatic, and becomes one.—_Dict. Phil. (Art. “Superstition”)_. The Bible If there are many difficulties we cannot solve, mysteries we cannot comprehend, adventures which we cannot credit, prodigies which display the credulity of the human mind, and contradictions which it is impossible to reconcile, it is in order to exercise our faith and to-humiliate our reason.—_Dict. Phil._ (Art. “Contradictions”). Transubstantiation Julius II. makes and eats God; but with armor on his back and helmet on his head he wades in blood and carnage. Leo X. holds God in his body, his mistresses in his arms, and the money extorted by the sale of indulgences in his coffers, and those of his sister.—_Dict. Phil._ (Art. “Eucharist”). Dreams and Ghosts Have you not found, like me, that they are the origin of the opinion so generally diffused throughout antiquity touching spectres and manes? A man deeply afflicted at the death of his wife, or his son, sees them in his sleep; they have the same characteristics; he speaks to them, they reply; they have certainly appeared to him. Other men have had similar dreams. It is impossible, then, to doubt that the dead return; but it is certain at the same time that these dead—whether buried or reduced to ashes, or lost at sea—could not reappear in their bodies. It is, then, their soul that has been seen. This soul must be extended, light, impalpable, since in speaking with it we cannot embrace it. _Effugit imago per levibus vetitis_ (Virgil). It is moulded, designed upon the body which it habited, since it perfectly resembles it. It is given the name of shade or manes, and from all this a confused idea remains in the head, which perpetuates itself all the better because nobody understands it.—_Dict. Phil._ (Art. “Somnambulists and Dreams” ). Mortifying the Flesh