is relative to particular interests
and to natures having a constitutional and definite bias, and having
consequently special preferences which it is chimerical to expect the
rest of the world to be determined by. The attempt to subsume the
natural order under the moral is like attempts to establish a government
of the parent by the child--something children are not averse to. But
such follies are the follies of an intelligent and eager creature,
restless in a world it cannot at once master and comprehend. They are
the errors of reason, wanderings in the by-paths of philosophy, not due
to lack of intelligence or of faith in law, but rather to a premature
vivacity in catching at laws, a vivacity misled by inadequate
information. The hunger for facile wisdom is the root of all false
philosophy. The mind's reactions anticipate in such cases its sufficient
nourishment; it has not yet matured under the rays of experience, so
that both materials and guidance are lacking for its precocious
organising force. Superstitious minds are penetrating and narrow, deep
and ignorant. They apply the higher categories before the lower--an
inversion which in all spheres produces the worst and most pathetic
disorganisation, because the lower functions are then deranged and the
higher contaminated. Poetry anticipates science, on which it ought to
follow, and imagination rushes in to intercept memory, on which it ought
to feed. Hence superstition and the magical function of religion; hence
the deceptions men fall into by cogitating on things they are ignorant
of and arrogating to themselves powers which they have never learned to
exercise.

[Sidenote: Inattention suffers them to spread.]

It is now generally acknowledged that workers of miracles, prophets,
soothsayers, and inspired or divinely appointed men may, like
metaphysicians, be quite sincere and fully believe they possess the
powers which they pretend to display. In the case of the more
intelligent, however, this sincerity was seldom complete, but mixed with
a certain pitying or scornful accommodation to the vulgar mind.
Something unusual might actually have happened, in which case the
reference of it to the will that welcomed it (without, of course, being
able to command it unconditionally) might well seem reasonable. Or
something normal might have been interpreted fancifully, but to the
greater glory of God and edification of the faithful; in which case the
incidental error might