o we not make the proof of this depend upon the uniformity
of the phenomena which exhibit it? When we say, for example, that
hunger and thirst are universal appetites, is it not because we find
them universal? or if we say that the senses of sight and hearing are
characteristic of the race, do we not contend that these are so,
because we find them uniform in such an immense variety of instances,
that the exceptions are not worth reckoning? If men sometimes saw
black where others saw white, some objects rectilinear which others
saw curved, objects small which others saw large,--nay, the very same
men at different times seeing the same objects differently colored,
and of varying forms and attitudes, and every second man almost
stone-blind into the bargain,--I rather think that, instead of saying
men were endowed with one and the same power of vision, we should say
that our nature exhibited only an imperfect and rudimentary tendency
towards so desirable a faculty; but that a clear, uniform, faculty of
vision there certainly was not. As I gaze upon the spectacle of the
infinite diversities of religion, which variegate, but, alas! do not
beautify the what is there to remind me of every uniformity of which
I do see the indelible traces in every faculty really characteristic
of our nature; as, for example, our senses and our appetites? Powerfully
does Hume urge this argument in his--"Natural History of Religions."
(Introduction)

I have my doubts--admire the modesty of a sceptic--whether the entire
phenomena of religion do not favor the conclusion, that man, in this
respect, only the traces of an imperfect, truncated creature; that,
he is in the predicament of the half-created lion so graphically
described by Milton:--

"Now half appeared
The tawny lion, pawings to get free
His hinder parts";

only, unfortunately, man's "hinder parts"--his lower nature--have
come up first, and appear, unhappily, prominent; while his nobler
"moral and spiritual faculties" still seem stuck in the dust!

There is, indeed, another hypothesis, which squares, perhaps, equally
well with the phenomena,--I mean that of the Bible:--that man is not
in his original state; that the religions constitution of his nature,
in some way or other, has received a shock. But either this, or the
supposition that man has been insufficiently equipped for the uniform
elimination of religious truth, is, I think, alone in harmony with
the facts; and to those facts,