men are governed by superstition and
fear; when they desert the sublime standard of reason; when they take
the words of others and do not investigate for themselves.

Even the great men of those days were nearly as weak in this matter
as the most ignorant. Kepler, one of the greatest men of the world,
an astronomer second to none, although he plucked from the stars the
secrets of the universe, was an astrologer, and really believed that
he could predict the career of a man by finding what star was in the
ascendant at his birth. This great man breathed, so to speak, the
atmosphere of his time. He believed in the music of the spheres, and
assigned alto, bass, tenor, and treble to certain stars.

Tycho Brahe, another astronomer, kept an idiot, whose disconnected and
meaningless words he carefully set down, and then put them together in
such manner as to make prophecies, and then waited patiently to see them
fulfilled. Luther believed that he had actually seen the devil, and had
discussed points of theology with him. The human mind was in chains.
Every idea almost was a monster. Thought was deformed. Facts were looked
upon as worthless. Only the wonderful was worth preserving. Things that
actually happened were not considered worth recording;--real occurrences
were too common. Everybody expected the miraculous.

The ghosts were supposed to be busy; devils were thought to be the
most industrious things in the universe, and with these imps, every
occurrence of an unusual character was in some way connected. There was
no order, no serenity, no certainty, in anything. Everything depended
upon ghosts and phantoms. Man was, for the most part, at the mercy of
malevolent spirits. He protected himself as best he could with holy
water and tapers and wafers and cathedrals. He made noises and rung
bells to frighten the ghosts, and he made music to charm them. He used
smoke to choke them, and incense to please them. He wore beads and
crosses. He said prayers, and hired others to say them. He fasted when
he was hungry, and feasted when he was not. He believed everything that
seemed unreasonable, just to appease the ghosts. He humbled himself. He
crawled in the dust. He shut the doors and windows, and excluded every
ray of light from the temple of the soul. He debauched and polluted
his own mind, and toiled night and day to repair the walls of his own
prison. From the garden of his heart he plucked and trampled upon the
holy flowers of