The Roommate From Hell

365: some nations held one principle for the origin & some another;

366: we of Israel taught that the Poetic Genius (as you now call it) was the first principle and all other others merely derivative,

367: which was the cause of our despising the priests & Philosophers of other countries,

368: and prophecying that all Gods would at last be proved to originate in ours & to be the tributaries of the Poetic Genius;

369: it was this that our great poet King David desired so fervently & invokes so patheticly,

371: and we so loved our God, that we cursed in his name all deities of surrounding nations, and asserted that they had rebelled;

372: from these opinions the vulgar came to think that all nations would at last be subject to the jews.

374: I heard this with some wonder, & must confess my own conviction.

375: After dinner I ask’d Isaiah to favour the world with his lost works, he said none of equal value was lost.

379: I then asked Ezekiel, why he eat dung, & lay so long on his right & left side?

380: he answer’d, the desire of raising other men into a perception of the infinite;

381: this the North American tribes practise, & is he honest who resists his genius or conscience only for the sake of present ease or gratification?