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Be this as it may, what we have is enough to perplex us greatly; and the control allowed by the fragments which have been saved from historic antiquity absolutely removes all suspicion of more or less recent fraud or deception in respect of the essentials. Moreover, any fraud or deception of this nature seems hardly possible and would be so ingenious that we should be obliged to marvel at it as a phenomenon almost as remarkable as that whereof it would be seeking to give the illusion; and we should have to admit that the mind of man has never insinuated itself so far into the infinity of time and space, or into the origin of things, and has never risen to such heights. Had this revelation profited by all the attainments of our latter-day science and thought, it could not have furnished us with theories more satisfactory, more logical, more coherent, more plausible, more synthetic, or worthier of the infinity which they strive to embrace and often seem to attain, on the rhythm of the eternities, the ebb and flow of the eternal Becoming, the never-ending cycle and the periodic existences of the ego, the birth, movement and evolution of the worlds, the divine breath and the intelligence that animate it, on Maya, the eternal illusion of ignorance, the struggle for life, natural selection, the gradual development and transformation of stars and men, the functions and energies of the ether, immortal and infallible justice, the intermolecular and fantastic activity of matter, on the nature of the soul and the existence of the vast, nameless power that governs the universe, in a word, on all the riddles that assail and all the mysteries that overwhelm us.
But, let us hasten to repeat it, there could not seriously be any question of fraud, because the texts or traditions that might be regarded with suspicion are corroborated by other texts, such as the sacred inscriptions of Egypt, which no one thinks of contesting. At most we may come upon a few passages antedated by the imprudent zeal of adepts or commentators, a few interpolations which merely embroider the majestic lines. Taking it as a whole, we have to do with a revelation which dates back infinitely farther than all that we have called the prehistoric ages, wherefore it is legitimate that our astonishment should be unbounded.