t themselves to a contriving mind. To destroy any power growing
wild from the rank productive force of the human mind is almost
tantamount, in the moral world, to the destruction of the apparently
active properties of bodies in the material. It would be like the
attempt to destroy (if it were in our competence to destroy) the
expansive force of fixed air in nitre, or the power of steam, or of
electricity, or of magnetism. These energies always existed in Nature,
and they were always discernible. They seemed, some of them
unserviceable, some noxious, some no better than a sport to
children,--until contemplative ability, combining with practic skill,
tamed their wild nature, subdued them to use, and rendered them at once
the most powerful and the most tractable agents, in subservience to the
great views and designs of men. Did fifty thousand persons, whose mental
and whose bodily labor you might direct, and so many hundred thousand a
year of a revenue, which was neither lazy nor superstitious, appear too
big for your abilities to wield? Had you no way of using the men, but by
converting monks into pensioners? Had you no way of turning the revenue
to account, but through the improvident resource of a spendthrift sale?
If you were thus destitute of mental funds, the proceeding is in its
natural course. Your politicians do not understand their trade; and
therefore they sell their tools.

But the institutions savor of superstition in their very principle; and
they nourish it by a permanent and standing influence.--This I do not
mean to dispute; but this ought not to hinder you from deriving from
superstition itself any resources which may thence be furnished for the
public advantage. You derive benefits from many dispositions and many
passions of the human mind which are of as doubtful a color, in the
moral eye, as superstition itself. It was your business to correct and
mitigate everything which was noxious in this passion, as in all the
passions. But is superstition the greatest of all possible vices? In its
possible excess I think it becomes a very great evil. It is, however, a
moral subject, and of course admits of all degrees and all
modifications. Superstition is the religion of feeble minds; and they
must be tolerated in an intermixture of it, in some trifling or some
enthusiastic shape or other, else you will deprive weak minds of a
resource found necessary to the strongest. The body of all true religion
consists, to