conceive or understand. His infinity consists in His perfections, His faculties, His attributes, of which the vulgar can, according to the measure of their understanding, grasp some feeble emanations, and draw nearer to Him by detaching them from the universality—that is, by particularizing and personifying them. This is the particularization and the personification which constitutes, as I have said, polytheism. The mass of gods which result from it, is as infinite as the Divinity itself whence it had birth. Each nation, each people, each city adopts at its liking, those of the divine faculties which are best suited to its character and its requirements. These faculties, represented by simulacra, become so many particular gods whose variety of names augments the number still further. Nothing can limit this immense theogony, since the Primal Cause whence it emanates has not done so. The vulgar, lured by the objects which strike the senses, can become idolatrous, and he does ordinarily; he can even distinguish these objects of his adoration, one from another, and believe that there really exist as many gods as statues; but the sage, the philosopher, the most ordinary man of letters does not fall into this error. He knows, with Plutarch, that different places and names do not make different gods; that the Greeks and Barbarians, the nations of the North and those of the South, adore the same Divinity[1] he restores easily that infinity of attributes to the unity of the essence, and as the honoured remnants of the ancient Sramanas, the priests of the Burmans, still do today, he worships God, whatever may be the altar, the temple, and the place where he finds himself.[2]
- ↑ Plutar., De Isid. et Osirid., p. 377.
- ↑ The priests of the Burmans, called Rahans, but whose generic name is that of Sramana, whence came to them that of Sramaneras, which the ancients gave them, carry the spirit of tolerance as far as possible. They visit with the same devotion pagodas, mosques, and churches; never does one see them being persecuted, nor persecuting others in the cause of religion. The Brahmans, Mussulmans, and Christians occupy important posts among them without their being scandalized. They regard all men as brothers. (Asiat.
