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 ...

28 INTRODUCTION.
A complicated clreed exposes one, by reactionz, to general skepticism. - I shall conclude this subject with' remarking, that, although in all moral and religious systems there is a great mixture of important truth, and although it is in consequence of this
alliance that errors and absurdities are enabled to preserve their
hold of the belief, yet it is commonly found, that, in proportion
as an established creed is complicated in its dogmas and in its
ceremonies, and in proportion to the number of accessory ideas
which it has grafted upon the truth, the more difficult is it for
those who have adopted it in childhood to emancipate themselves completely from its influence; and in those cases in
which they at last succeed, the greater is their danger of abandoning, along with their errors, all the truths which they had
been taught to connect with them. The Roman Catholic system is shaken off with much greater difficulty than those which
are taught in the Reformed churches; but when it loses its
hold on the mind, it much more frequently prepares the way
for unlimited skepticism. The cause of this I may, perhaps,
have an opportunity of pointing out, in treating of the Association of Ideas.*
[* Sir WVilliam Hamilton places the usefulness of the Philosophy of
Mind, considered as a means of education, on different, and, as we think,
better chosen, grounds.
" On this ground," he says, "we rest the preeminent utility of metaphysical speculations. That they comprehend all the sublimest objects of
our theoretical and moral interest; - that every natural conclusion concerning God, the soul, the present worth, and the future destiny of man,
is exclusively metaphysical, will be at once admitted. But we do not
found the importance on the paramount dignity of the pursuit. It is as
the best gymnastic of the mind, - as a means, principally and almost exclusively conducive to the highest education of our noblest powers, that we
would vindicate to these speculations the necessity which has too frequently been denied them. By no other intellectual application, (and,
least of all, by physical pursuits, ) is the soul thus reflected on itself, and its
faculties concentred in such independent, vigorous, unwonted, and continuous energy; - by none, therefore, are its best capacities so variously
and intensely evolved. Where there is the most life, there is the victory."
-Discussions on Philosophy, etc. 2d ed. p. 41.