If the religion he announces be true, will violence and insolence render it more so? Do you put yourself in a rage, when you say that it is necessary to be mild, patient, beneficent, just, and to fulfil all the duties of society? No; because everyone is of your own opinion. Why, then, do you abuse your brother when preaching to him a mysterious system of metaphysics? Because his opinion irritates your self-love. You are so proud as to require your brother to submit his intelligence to yours; humbled pride produces the wrath; it has no other source. A man who has received twenty wounds in a battle does not fly into a passion; but a divine, wounded by the refusal of your assent, at once becomes furious and implacable. EIGHTH QUESTION. Must we not carefully distinguish the religion of the state from theological religion? The religion of the state requires that the imans keep registers of the circumcised, the vicars or pastors registers of the baptized; that there be mosques, churches, temples, days consecrated to rest and worship, rites established by law; that the ministers of those rites enjoy consideration without power; that they teach good morals to the people, and that the ministers of the law watch over the morals of the ministers of the temples. This religion of the state cannot at any time cause any disturbance. It is otherwise with theological religion: this is the source of all imaginable follies and disturbances; it is the parent of fanaticism and civil discord; it is the enemy of mankind. A bonze asserts that _Fo_ is a God,-that he was foretold by fakirs, that he was born of a white elephant, and that every bonze can by certain grimaces make a _Fo_. A _talapoin_ says, that _Fo_ was a holy man, whose doctrine the bonzes have corrupted, and that _Sammonocodom_ is the true God. After a thousand arguments and contradictions, the two factions agree to refer the question to the _dalai-lama_, who resides three hundred leagues off, and who is not only immortal, but also infallible. The two factions send to him a solemn deputation; and the _dalai-lama_ begins, according to his divine custom, by distributing among them the contents of his close-stool. The two rival sects at first receive them with equal reverence; have them dried in the sun, and encase them in little chaplets which they kiss devoutly; but no sooner have the _dalai-lama_ and his council pronounced in the name of _Fo_, than the condemned party throw their chaplets in the vice-god's face, and would fain give him a sound thrashing. The other party defend their _lama_, from whom they have received good lands; both fight a long time; and when at last they are tired of mutual extermination, assassination, and poisoning, they grossly abuse each other, while the _dalai-lama_ laughs, and still distributes his excrement to whosoever is desirous of receiving the good father lama's precious favors. RHYME.