sequent chapters.

In respect to these Grecian oracles, it is proper here to state, that
there has been much discussion among scholars on the question how they
were enabled to maintain, for so long a period, so extended a credit
among a people as intellectual and well informed as the Greeks. It was
doubtless by means of a variety of contrivances and influences that
this end was attained. There is a natural love of the marvelous among
the humbler classes in all countries, which leads them to be very
ready to believe in what is mystic and supernatural; and they
accordingly exaggerate and color such real incidents as occur under
any strange or remarkable circumstances, and invest any unusual
phenomena which they witness with a miraculous or supernatural
interest. The cave at Delphi might really have emitted gases which
would produce quite striking effects upon those who inhaled them; and
how easy it would be for those who witnessed these effects to imagine
that some divine and miraculous powers must exist in the aerial
current which produced them. The priests and priestesses, who
inhabited the temples in which these oracles were contained, had, of
course, a strong interest in keeping up the belief of their reality in
the minds of the community; so were, in fact, all the inhabitants of
the cities which sprung up around them. They derived their support
from the visitors who frequented these places, and they contrived
various ways for drawing contributions, both of money and gifts, from
all who came. In one case there was a sacred stream near an oracle,
where persons, on permission from the priests, were allowed to bathe.
After the bathing, they were expected to throw pieces of money into
the stream. What afterward, in such cases, became of the money, it is
not difficult to imagine.

Nor is it necessary to suppose that all these priests and priestesses
were impostors. Having been trained up from infancy to believe that
the inspirations were real, they would continue to look upon them as
such all their lives. Even at the present day we shall all, if we
closely scrutinize our mental habits, find ourselves continuing to
take for granted, in our maturer years, what we inconsiderately
imbibed or were erroneously taught in infancy, and that, often, in
cases where the most obvious dictates of reason, or even the plain
testimony of our senses, might show us that our notions are false. The
priests and priestesses, therefore, who imp