MODERN SUPERSTITION
It is said continually--that the age of miracles is past. We deny that
it is so in any sense which implies this age to differ from all other
generations of man except one. It is neither past, nor ought we to wish
it past. Superstition is no vice in the constitution of man: it is not
true that, in any philosophic view, _primus in orbe deos fecit timor_
--meaning by _fecit_ even so much as _raised into light_. As Burke
remarked, the _timor_ at least must be presumed to preexist, and must
be accounted for, if not the gods. If the fear created the gods, what
created the fear? Far more true, and more just to the grandeur of man,
it would have been to say--_Primus in orbe deos fecit sensus
infiniti_. Even in the lowest Caffre, more goes to the sense of a
divine being than simply his wrath or his power. Superstition, indeed,
or the sympathy with the invisible, is the great test of man's nature,
as an earthly combining with a celestial. In superstition lies the
possibility of religion. And though superstition is often injurious,
degrading, demoralizing, it is so, not as a form of corruption or
degradation, but as a form of non-development. The crab is harsh, and
for itself worthless. But it is the germinal form of innumerable finer
fruits: not apples only the most exquisite, and pears; the peach and
the nectarine are said to have radiated from this austere stock when
cultured, developed, and transferred to all varieties of climate.
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