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 ...

226 THE INFLUENCE OF CASUAL ASSOCIATIONS.
should not rather the melancholy histories which lie has exhibited of the follies and caprices of superstition, direct our
attention to those sacred and indelible characters on the human
mind, which all these perversions of reaso-n are unable to
obliterate; like that image of himself, which Phidias wished to
perpetuate, by stamping it so deeply on the buckler of his
iiinerva; "ut nemo delere posset aut divellere, qui totam statuam non imminueret;" [that no one could destroy it or take
it away, without ruining the whole statue.] In truth, the more
strange the contradictions, and the more ludicrous the ceremonies, to which the pride of human reason has thus been reconciled; the stronger is our evidence that religion has a foundation
in the nature of man. When the greatest of modern philosophers declares, that: he would rather believe all the fables
in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this
universal frame is without mind;" (Lord Bacon, in his Essays;)
he has expressed the same feeling, which, in all ages and nations,
has led good men, unaccustomed to reasoning, to an implicit faith
in the creed of their infancy; - a feeling which affords an evidence of the existence of the Deity incomparably more striking,
than if, unmixed with error and undebased by superstition, this
most important of all principles had commanded the universal
assent of mankind. Where are the other truths, in the whole
circle of the sciences, which are so essential to human happiness, as to procure an easy access, not only for themselves, but
for whatever opinions may happen to be blended with them?
Where are the truths so venerable and commanding, as to impart
their own sublimity to every trifling memorial which recalls them
to our remembrance; to bestow solemnity and elevation on every
mode of expression by which they are conveyed; and which, in
whatever scene they have habitually occupied the thoughts, consecrate every object which it presents to our senses, and the
very ground we have been accustomed to tread? To attempt
to weaken the authority of such impressions, by a detail of the
endless variety of forms which they derive from casual associations, is surely an employment unsuitable to the dignity of philosophy. To the vulgar it may be amusing, in this, as in other