( III )
 

CHAPTER  XI.

ABOUT  THE   BEGINNING   OF  IDOL-WORSHIP,   AND   A
DESCRIPTION  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  IDOLS.

It is well known that the popular mind leans towards origin of

1                  -11               1-1           -11                               •                  1                1-if  idol-worship

the sensible world, and has an aversion to the world ot in the
abstract thought which is only understood by highly of man.
educated people, of whom in every time and every
place there are only few. And as common people will
only acquiesce in pictorial representations, many of the
leaders of religious communities have so far deviated
from the right path as to give such imagery in their
books and houses of worship, like "the Jews and Chris¬
tians, and, more than all, the Manichseans. These
words of mine would at once receive a sufficient illus¬
tration if, for example, a picture of the Prophet were
made, or of Mekka and the Ka'ba, and were shown to
an uneducated man or woman. Their joy in looking
at the thing would bring them to kiss the picture, to
rub their cheeks against it, and to roll themselves in
the dust before it, as if they were seeing not the'picture,
but the original, and were in this way, as if they were
present in the holy places, performing the rites of pil¬
grimage, the great and the small ones.

This is the cause which leads to the manufacture of
idols, monuments in honour of certain much venerated
persons, prophets, sages, angels, destined to keep alive
their memory when they are absent or dead, to create
for them a lasting place of grateful veneration in the
hearts of men when they die.    But when much time