Suppose two persons tell foolish stories, one whose words have a two-fold sense, understood only by his own followers, the other which has only the one sense, a stranger not being in the secret, who hears them both speak in this manner, would pass on them a like judgment. But if afterwards in the rest of their conversation one speak with the tongue of angels, and the other mere wearisome common-places, he will judge that the one spoke in mysteries and not the other; the one having sufficiently shown that he was incapable of absurdity, and capable of being mysterious, the other that he is incapable of mystery, and capable of absurdity.
The Old Testament is a cipher.
History of China.—I believe those histories only, whose witnesses let themselves be slaughtered.
It is not a question of seeing this in bulk. I say there is in it a something to blind and something to enlighten.
In this one word I destroy all your reasoning. "But China obscures," you say, and I answer, "China obscures, but there is light to be found; seek it."
Thus all that you say makes for one of these designs, and not at all against the other. So this serves, and does no harm.
We must then look at this in detail, the papers must be laid on the table.
Against the history of China, the historians of Mexico. The five suns, of which the last is but eight hundred years old.