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The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 09 (of 10)

Note 137 — KING JALI’AD OF HIND AND HIS WAZIR SHIMAS; FOLLOWED BY THE HISTORY OF KING WIRD KHAN, SON OF KING JALI’AD, WITH HIS WOMEN AND WAZIRS.[55] (continued 2)

Richard Francis Burton translation · Edition 2

It is the innate craving in the “Aryan” (Iranian, not the Turanian) mind, this longing to know what follows Death, or if nothing follow it, which accounts for the marvellous diffusion of the so-called Spiritualism which is only Swedenborgianism systematised and carried out into action, amongst nervous and impressionable races like the Anglo-American. In England it is the reverse; the obtuse sensitiveness of a people bred on beef and beer has made the “Religion of the Nineteenth Century” a manner of harmless magic, whose miracles are table-turning and ghost seeing whilst the prodigious rascality of its prophets (the so-called Mediums) has brought it into universal disrepute. It has been said that Catholicism must be true to co-exist with the priest and it is the same with Spiritualism proper, by which I understand the belief in a life beyond the grave, a mere continuation of this life; it flourishes (despite the Medium) chiefly because it has laid before man the only possible and intelligible idea of a future state.

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