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before his eyes , or anticipates the results of causes now in operation , and speculates on the future condition of the human race , he is more and more impressed with the importance of employing the intellectual powers on legitimate objects , and directing them diligently to attainable ends . If all men could see with his eyes , and foliovfr the convictions of his understanding , there would be an eiid at once to half the evils that afflict humanity . Let no one accuse us of exaggeration ; but if surprised at our statement , let him
pause and consider the illimitable influence which the intellectual and moral powers have on one another ; let him reflect on the tendency of difference of opinion to excite bad passions , and the reciprocal influence of bad passions in perverting the judgment and clouding the understanding . If he objects that we disregard the large class of natural evils , we reply , that natural and moral evil produce and reproduce each other perpetually . Moreover , natural evife might be neutralized or destroyed to an extent which we can yet scarcely conceive , if men ' s minds were directed to an efficacious
inquiry into their origin and results . If natural philosophers had always known what they were about , if they had determined what end they meant to attain , and had early discovered the right road to their object , there is no saying how far our race might by this time have triumphed over the ills that flesh is heir to . If all the time , thought , and labour , which have been spent on the study of alchemy , had been devoted to oherotcal science worthy the name , who can say how far the kindred sciences would have advanced , or what splendid results would have appeared by this time ? If there had been
no empiricism in medical practice , if physicians had known how to study , aad their patients what to expect from them and how far to believe them , who can say how often the plague might have been staid , how many dreadful diseases might have been extirpated , how many victims to quackery and credulity might have been spared ? If legislators had , some ages ago , hit upon the right mode of ascertaining the proper objects ai&d best modes of civil government , and if the nations had urged them on , and supported them ia the inquiry , and exercised a due check on the power they conferred , they might have been saved the inflictions of famine , fire , and sword , and all the
countless evils which follow in the train of war . If , again , our objector insists that all this is mere speculation , we request him to listen to a very few { acts , which may shew what a host of evils has arisen from infirmities of the understanding , and for one century after another spread its desolating march over the most civilized portion of mankind . Among so great a variety of instances as history lays before us , it is difficult to say what facts are the most striking ; and we will , therefore , confine ourselves to those which approach the nearest , and detail a few of the mistakes of civilized , enlightened , and Christian Europe . Passing over the destructive wars among savage nations , arising from trivial causes , but perpetuated from generation to generation—passing over the cases of the innumerable victims to superstition in India , to etiquette ia China , to bigotry among the Mahometans , and to brute force uncontrolled by intellectual power in all regions of the globe , let us
see-what was done in neighbouring countries , in times not very far distant from our own . The Emperor Constantine laboured for a long series of years , with the best intentions , to establish a perfect uniformity of faith in the Christian worlcL For want of understanding the plain truth that the minds of men are differently constituted , and can never be assimilated by human authority , he encouraged heart-buminga and dissensions more hostile to the spirit of religion than the despised i nstkutions of barbarous states . To what condition his own mind was brought by mistaken zeal , we learn from
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522 Essays on the Art of Thinking .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1829, page 522, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2575/page/2/
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