"I owe to these last weeks a very important lesson: I found Manu's book of laws in a French translation done in India under strict supervision from the most eminent priests and scholars there. This absolutely Aryan work, a priestly codex of morality based on the Vedas, on the idea of caste and very ancient tradition-not pessimistic, albeit very sacerdotal-supplements my views on religion in me most remarkable way. I confess to having the impression that everything else that we have by way of moral lawgiving seems to me an imitation and even a caricature of it-preeminently, Egypticism does; but even Plato seems to me in all the main points simply to have been well instructed by a Brahmin. It makes the Jews look like a Chandala race which learns from its masters the principles of making a priestly caste the master which organizes a people."