iritual.

The proof of this is, that, among the images which represent the same
original and the same type, there are some which are believed to have
more power, and to be capable of working more miracles, than others. The
Saint Antonio, for example, which is venerated in one church in Madrid,
called La Florida, is much more popular than the Saint Antonio venerated
in another, called the Church de los Portugueses. In Burgos there is a
crucifix to which infinitely more solemn worship is paid than to one in
any parish church, or even in any chapel of the same city. The popes
have encouraged this absurd aberration of the human mind, by conceding,
and permitting the bishops to concede, indulgences to certain statues,
certain pictures, and even certain engravings, which represent objects of
devotion. The person who prays in front of that favoured object gains so
many years of indulgences; he who prays to the same saint, but before
another statue, another picture, or another engraving, obtains nothing.
Of course, all these concessions which are obtained are paid for in ready
money.

Now to the point. Are not these means the most efficacious that can be
imagined in order to materialise religion, and to subjugate it entirely
to the senses? Is it not infinitely more easy and shorter, especially
for rude and illiterate men, to believe in what they actually see, than
in any metaphysical notions, far above the reach of their understanding,
like those of a spiritual kind? From very ancient times it has been
thought that the impressions which the mind receives through the medium
of sight, are more striking and efficacious than those which are
communicated to it by all the other organs of the senses. Horace has
followed out this idea in his well-known lines:--

"Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem
Quam quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus, et quae
Ipsi sibi tradit spectator."

_De Ar. Poe._, 180.

Thus it is explained why men imagined for many centuries that the sky was
a solid superficies, and that the earth was a superficial plane, bounded
by the horizon; that the sun moved round the earth; that the existence of
the antipodes was a chimera; that the dew fell in the same way as the
rain from the upper regions of the atmosphere; and other popular errors
which science has corrected, but which were in a certain way justified by
the undeniable testimony