'Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed
In one self-place; but when we are in hell,
And where hell is, there must we ever be;
And, to be short, when all this world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be hell which are not heaven.'
For what want is there of a Hell when all are pure? He enlarges upon the ancient Buddhist theory, that Happiness and Misery are equally distributed among men and beasts; some enjoy much and suffer much; others the reverse. Hence Diderot declares, 'Sober passions produce only the commonplace ... the man of moderate passion lives and dies like a brute.' And again we have the half-truth—
'That the mark of rank in nature
Is capacity for pain.'
The latter implies an equal capacity for pleasure, and thus the balance is kept.
"Hâjî Abdû then proceeds to show that Faith is an accident of birth. One of his omitted distichs says—
'Race makes religion; true! but aye upon the Maker acts the made.
A finite God, an infinite sin, in lieu of raising man, degrade.'
In a manner of dialogue he introduces the various races each fighting to establish his own belief. The Frank (Christian) abuses the Hindu, who retorts that he is of Mlenchha, mixed or impure, blood, a term applied to all non-Hindus. The same is done by Nazarene and Mohammedan; by the Confucian, who believes in nothing, and by the Soofi, who naturally has the last word. The association of the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph with the Trinity, in the Roman and Greek Churches, makes many Moslems conclude that Christians believe not in three but in five Persons. So an Englishman writes of the early Fathers, 'They not only said that 3 = 1, and that 1 = 3: they professed to explain how that curious arithmetical combination had been brought about. The Indivisible had been divided, and yet was not divided: it was divisible, and yet it was indivisible; black was white, and white was black; and yet there were not two colours but one colour; and whoever did not believe it would be damned.' The Arab quotation runs in the original—
'Ahsanu 'l-Makâni l' il-Falâ 'l-Jehannamu,
The best of places for (the generous) youth is Gehenna:'
Gehenna, alias Jahim, being the fiery place of eternal punishment. And the second saying, Al-nâr wa lâ 'l-'Ar'—'Fire (of Hell) rather than Shame,'—is equally condemned by the Koranist. The Gustâkhi (insolence) of Fate is the expression of Umar-i-Khayyâm (St. xxx.)—