OSMIN:
Are there notions common to all men which serve to make them live in
society?
SELIM:
Yes. I have travelled with Paul Lucas, and wherever I went, I saw that
people respected their father and their mother, that people believed
themselves to be obliged to keep their promises, that people pitied
oppressed innocents, that they hated persecution, that they regarded
liberty of thought as a rule of nature, and the enemies of this liberty
as enemies of the human race; those who think differently seemed to me
badly organized creatures, monsters like those who are born without eyes
and hands.
OSMIN:
Are these necessary things in all time and in all places?
SELIM:
Yes, if they were not they would not be necessary to the human species.
OSMIN:
So a belief which is new is not necessary to this species. Men could
very well live in society and accomplish their duty to God, before
believing that Mahomet had frequent interviews with the angel Gabriel.
SELIM:
Nothing is clearer; it would be ridiculous to think that man could not
accomplish his duty to God before Mahomet came into the world; it was
not at all necessary for the human species to believe in the Alcoran:
the world went along before Mahomet just as it goes along to-day. If
Mahometanism had been necessary to the world, it would have existed in
all places; God who has given us all two eyes to see the sun, would have
given us all an intelligence to see the truth of the Mussulman religion.
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