erous disease
of the human mind; but it is more especially to be dreaded amongst a
democratic people, because it readily amalgamates with that vice which
is most familiar to the heart under such circumstances. Democracy
encourages a taste for physical gratification: this taste, if it become
excessive, soon disposes men to believe that all is matter only; and
materialism, in turn, hurries them back with mad impatience to these
same delights: such is the fatal circle within which democratic nations
are driven round. It were well that they should see the danger and hold
back.

Most religions are only general, simple, and practical means of teaching
men the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. That is the greatest
benefit which a democratic people derives, from its belief, and hence
belief is more necessary to such a people than to all others. When
therefore any religion has struck its roots deep into a democracy,
beware lest you disturb them; but rather watch it carefully, as the most
precious bequest of aristocratic ages. Seek not to supersede the old
religious opinions of men by new ones; lest in the passage from one
faith to another, the soul being left for a while stripped of all
belief, the love of physical gratifications should grow upon it and fill
it wholly.

The doctrine of metempsychosis is assuredly not more rational than that
of materialism; nevertheless if it were absolutely necessary that a
democracy should choose one of the two, I should not hesitate to decide
that the community would run less risk of being brutalized by believing
that the soul of man will pass into the carcass of a hog, than by
believing that the soul of man is nothing at all. The belief in a
supersensual and immortal principle, united for a time to matter, is
so indispensable to man's greatness, that its effects are striking even
when it is not united to the doctrine of future reward and punishment;
and when it holds no more than that after death the divine principle
contained in man is absorbed in the Deity, or transferred to animate
the frame of some other creature. Men holding so imperfect a belief will
still consider the body as the secondary and inferior portion of
their nature, and they will despise it even whilst they yield to its
influence; whereas they have a natural esteem and secret admiration for
the immaterial part of man, even though they sometimes refuse to submit
to its dominion. That is enough to give a lofty cast to