ON MATTERS OP EELTEF; 49 



We have no need to look far without us for the pri- 

 mary caufe of ail this evil; it lies at home; for, in 

 fhort — the dsemon is under our own Ikin ! and, though, 

 for want of fufficient authorities, it is impoflible to 

 trace the hiftory of fuperftition with all due certainty : 

 nothing however is eafier than pfychologically to com- 

 prehend the origin of it from the circumftances wherein 

 the nations of remote antiquity were placed, according 

 to .the general hiftory of mankind. This however is 

 not the place for it, and it is no part of my prefent de- 

 lign to enter upon this deduction. 



The mofi: antient lawgivers, who felt thernfelves 

 called to the office of uniting in civil focieties the rude 

 races of mankind, ftill living in a kind of natural fero- 

 city, found the belief in deities inhabiting the fkies* 

 the earth, the fea, and under the earth, and more efpe- 

 cially the belief in paternal gods, and the tutelar divi- 

 nities of the region they inhabited, of the mountains 

 and rivers of it, and the like, already in firm pofTeffion 

 of their minds ; and the thought very naturally occurred 

 to them of employing this circumftance to their grand 

 defign* They faw, that the fear of the deities, under 

 the guidance of a lldiful hand, might be rendered the 

 moft efficacious means for taming and foftening the 

 rude people with whom they had to do, and for inuring 

 them to civil difcipline and order. Accordingly, they 

 made either the gods thernfelves the authors of their 

 laws, or at leafl: enacled them under their immediate 

 fanction ; they gave to divine worfhip a more ftated 

 form and a greater folemnity ; they inftituted myfteries ; 

 and among the Greeks, for example, Eleulis, Olym- 

 pia, and Delphi, were already in very antient times 

 vol. ii. s the 



