be just observed, without one ambitious epithet, that since that period
when ancient history, strictly so named, left off describing the state of
mankind, more than a myriad of millions of our race have been on earth,
and quitted it without one ray of the knowledge the most important to
spirits sojourning here, and going hence.

But while any attempt to carry the representation of the fatal effects of
ignorance over the extent of so dreary a scene is declined, let it not be
forgotten that they have been an awful reality; that they have actually
existed, in time, and place, and number of victims; that there actually
_were_ the men, and so many men, who exemplified, and in so many ways, the
truth we are illustrating. And a truth which has its demonstration in
facts ought to come with the weight of all the facts that we believe ever
_did_ demonstrate it. When they are not presented in breadth and detail
prominently in our view, we are apt to lose the due effect of our knowing
them to have existed.

It will be enough to advert very briefly to the Mohammedan imposture,
though that is perhaps the most signal instance within all time, of a
malignant delusion maintained directly and immediately by ignorance, by an
absolute determination and even a fanatic zeal not to receive one new
idea. Tenets involving the most palpable impossibilities, and asserted in
self-contradictory terms, must stand inviolable to all question or
controversy; literature must be scouted as a profane folly; not a
principle of true philosophy is to be admitted; hardly is an application
of the plainest mechanics to improve a machine or implement to be
tolerated; or an infidel is to be only _pardoned_, through contempt, for a
successful obtrusion of science to render the most important service,--to
save, for instance, a Mussulman ship-with its proud, besotted commander
and crew from destruction, [Footnote: There is a very curious example of