" Manichaeism is absurd; and
that is why it has had so many supporters.
I admit that I have not been enlightened by all that Bayle says about
the Manichaeans and the Paulicians. That is controversy; I would have
preferred pure philosophy. Why discuss our mysteries beside
Zarathustra's? As soon as you dare to treat of our mysteries, which need
only faith and no reasoning, you open precipices for yourself.
The trash in our scholastic theology has nothing to do with the trash in
Zarathustra's reveries.
Why debate original sin with Zarathustra? There was never any question
of it save in St. Augustine's time. Neither Zarathustra nor any
legislator of antiquity had ever heard speak of it.
If you dispute with Zarathustra, put under lock and key the old and the
new Testaments which he did not know, and which one must revere without
desiring to explain them.
What then should I have said to Zarathustra? My reason cannot admit two
gods who fight, that is good only in a poem where Minerva quarrels with
Mars. My feeble reason is much more content with a single great Being,
whose essence was to make, and who has made all that nature has
permitted Him, than it is satisfied with two great Beings, one of whom
spoils the works of the other. Your bad principle Ahriman, has not been
able to upset a single one of the astronomical and physical laws of the
good principle Ormuzd; everything progresses in the heavens with the
greatest regularity.
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