RELIGIOUS PREJUDICES
If your nurse has told you that Ceres rules over the crops, or that
Vistnou and Xaca made themselves men several times, or that Sammonocodom
came to cut down a forest, or that Odin awaits you in his hall near
Jutland, or that Mohammed or somebody else made a journey into the sky;
if lastly your tutor comes to drive into your brain what your nurse has
imprinted on it you keep it for life. If your judgment wishes to rise
against these prejudices, your neighbours and, above all, your
neighbours' wives cry out "Impious reprobate," and dismay you; your
dervish, fearing to see his income diminish, accuses you to the cadi,
and this cadi has you impaled if he can, because he likes ruling over
fools, and thinks that fools obey better than others: and that will last
until your neighbours and the dervish and the cadi begin to understand
that foolishness is good for nothing, and that persecution is
abominable.
_RARE_
Rare in natural philosophy is the opposite of dense. In moral
philosophy, it is the opposite of common.
This last variety of rare is what excites admiration. One never admires
what is common, one enjoys it.
An eccentric thinks himself above the rest of wretched mortals when he
has in his study a rare medal that is good for nothing, a rare book that
nobody has the courage to read, an old engraving by Albrecht Durer,
badly designed and badly printed: he triumphs if he has in his garden a
stunted tree from America.
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