DISEASES CLASS III. 2. 2. 4. 



repetitions it would cease to be a single fact, and would there- 

 fore gain the evidence of analogy. But the latter, as having less 

 knowledge of nature, and less facility of voluntary exertion, would 

 more readily believe the assertions of others, or a single fact, as 

 presented to his own observation. Of this kind are the bulk of 

 mankind; they continue throughout their lives in a state of child- 

 hood, and have thus been the dupes of priests and politicians in 

 all countries and in all ages of the world. 



In regard to religious matters, there is an intellectual coward- 

 ice instilled into the minds of the people from their infancy; which 

 prevents their inquiry: credulity is made an indispensable virtue; 

 to inquire or exert their reason in religious matters is denounced 

 as sinful; and in the catholic church is punished with more se- 

 vere penances than moral crimes. But in respect to our belief 

 of the supposed medical facts, which are published by variety of 

 authors; many of whom are ignorant, and therefore credulous; 

 the golden rule of David Hume may be applied with great ad- 

 vantage. " When two miraculous assertions oppose each other, 

 believe the less miraculous." Thus if a person is said to have 

 received the small-pox a second time, and to have gone through 

 all the stages of it, one may thus reason: twenty thousand people 

 have been exposed to the variolous contagion a second time with- 

 out receiving the variolous fever, to every one who has been said 

 to have thus received it; it appears, therefore, less miraculous, 

 that the assertor of this supposed fact has been deceived, or wishes 

 to deceive, than that it has so happened contrary to the long ex- 

 perienced order of nature. 



M. M. The method of cure is to increase our knowledge of 

 the laws of nature, and our habit of comparing whatever ideas 

 are presented to us with those known laws, and thus to counter- 

 act the fallacies of our senses, to emancipate ourselves from the 

 false impressions which we have imbibed in our infancy, and to 

 set the faculty of reason above that of imagination. 



