And thus, my lord, is it, that the masts of Mardians do not believe because they know, but because they know not.

And they are as ready to receive one thing as another, if it comes from a canonical source.

My lord, Mardi is as an ostrich, which will swallow augh you offer, even a bar of iron, if placed endwise.

And though the iron be indigestible, yet it serves to fill: in feeding, the end proposed.

For Mardi must have something to exercise its digestion, though that something be forever indigestible.