If these foolish persons have one jot of sense, it will be easy to convince them with a single word. One hundred and twenty-four thousand prophets more or less, the whole multitude of the saints and all the learned doctors of the law have faithfully followed the Holy Law, have been diligent in their devotions, and with prudent anxiety and dread about the future state, they have endured much pain and suffering. And how does it happen that you, who are so ignorant and stupid, have found out that they were mistaken and in error? What should lead you to prefer your baseless and corrupt fancies to their knowledge and science, and to say that the spirit has no real existence and that it does not continue to live after death? Perhaps you do not even admit that there is any material punishment. Truly the health of your moral being is so corrupted and depraved, that there is no cure for you; you belong to that class of whom God says in his holy word: "Even, when thou shalt call them into the right path, they will never follow in it."[1]
If one of these men should, however, reply: "Indeed I do not know for a certainty, but why should I on account of an uncertainty, pass my precious life in devotional austerities, and forbid myself the delights and pleasures of the world?" We observe in return. According to your principles, the probabilities are balanced as to whether the events spoken of as belonging to the future world will or will not happen. It follows then as a most rational conclusion, that you ought to act in the same way you would do, if you wished to preserve yourself from a great risk and danger. For, if these events should take place, you may thereby be saved from intense torment and obtain eternal felicity; whereas, if they should not occur, you will have suffered no injury from your precautions. We
