Travels in the Mogul Empire (Bernier) 6.9.6

6.9.6

Now, Sir, what think you? Had I not reason from all this great tissue of extravagant folly on which I have remarked ; from that childish panic of which I have spoken above ; from that superstitious piety and compassion toward the sun in order to deliver it from the malignant and dark Deüta ; from that trickery of prayers, of ablutions, of dippings, and of alms, either cast into the river, or bestowed on Brahmens ; from that mad and infernal hardihood of women to burn themselves with the body of those husbands whom frequently they have hated while alive ; from those various and frantic practices of the Fakires ; and lastly, from all that fabulous trash of their Beth and other books; was I not justified in taking as a motto to this letter, — the wretched fruit of so many voyages and so many reflections, a motto of which the modern satirist has so well known how to catch and convey the idea without so long a journey — 'There are no opinions too extravagant and ridiculous to find reception in the mind of man'?