Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

218 THE INIFLUENCE OF CASUAL ASSOCIATIONS.
arguments of the folly of all reasonings C priori concerning the
laws of nature, were frequently apt to run into the opposite
extreme, by recording every circumstance, even the most ludicrous, and the most obviously unessential, which attended their
experiments.*
Moral and political prejudices traced to the association of
ideas. - The observations which have been hitherto made, relate entirely to associations founded on casual combinations of
material objects, or of physical events. The effects which these
associations produce on the understanding, and which are so
palpable that they cannot fail to strike the most careless observer, will prepare the reader for the remarks I am now to
make, on some analogous prejudices which warp our opinions
on still more important subjects.
As the established laws of the material world, which have
been exhibited to our senses from our infancy, gradually accommodate to themselves the order of our thoughts; so the
most arbitrary and capricious institutions and customs, by a
long and constant and exclusive operation on the mind, acquire
such an influence in forming the intellectual habits, that every
deviation from them not only produces surprise, but is apt to
excite sentiments of contempt and of ridicule.t X person who
has never extended his views beyond that society of which he
himself is a member, is apt to consider many peculiarities in the
manners and customs of his countrymen as founded on the universal principles of the human constitution; and when he hears
of other nations, whose practices in similar cases are different,
* The reader will scarcely believe, that the following cure for a dysentery is copied verbatim from the works of Mr. Boyle:"Take the thigh-bone of a hanged man, (perhaps another may serve,
but this was still made use of,) calcine it to whiteness, and having purged
the patient with an antimonial medicine, give him one drachm of this white
powder for one dose, in some good cordial, whether conserve or liquor."
t "Nous nous accoutumons'a tout ce que nous voyons; etje ne seals
si le consulat du cheval de Caligula nous auroit autant sulpris que nous
nous l'imaginons." [We become accustomed to every thing which we see;
and I do not know that the consulship of Caligula's horse would have
surprised us as miuch as we imagine.] - Cardinal de Retz,