settling in Egypt, of which they had said so much evil. The name of
India is to be found only in the Book of Esther, and in that of Job
which was not Hebrew. One remarks a singular contrast between the sacred
books of the Hebrews, and those of the Indians. The Indian books
announce only peace and gentleness; they forbid the killing of animals:
the Hebrew books speak only of killing, of the massacre of men and
beasts; everything is slaughtered in the name of the Lord; it is quite
another order of things.

It is incontestably from the Brahmins that we hold the idea of the fall
of the celestial beings in revolt against the Sovereign of nature; and
it is from there probably that the Greeks drew the fable of the Titans.
It is there also that the Jews at last took the idea of the revolt of
Lucifer, in the first century of our era.

How could these Indians suppose a revolt in heaven without having seen
one on earth? Such a jump from human nature to divine nature is barely
conceivable. Usually one goes from known to unknown.

One does not imagine a war of giants until one has seen some men more
robust than the others tyrannize over their fellows. The first Brahmins
must either have experienced violent discords, or at least have seen
them in heaven.

It is a very astonishing phenomenon for a society of men who have never
made war to have invented a species of war made in the imaginary spaces,
or in a globe distant from ours, or in what is called the "firmament,"
the "empyrean." But it must be carefully observed that in this revolt of
celestial beings against their Sovereign no blows were struck, no
celestial blood flowed, no mountains hurled at the head, no angels cut