So used, it breathes the same feeling as "God
tempers the wind to the shorn lamb"--or the more sportive adage, that
"the fairies take care of children and tipsy folk." The persuasion
itself, in addition to the general religious feeling of mankind, and
the scarcely less general love of the marvellous, may be accounted
for from our tendency to exaggerate all effects that seem
disproportionate to their visible cause, and all circumstances that
are in any way strongly contrasted with our notions of the persons
under them. Secondly, it arises from the safety and success which an
ignorance of danger and difficulty sometimes actually assists in
procuring; inasmuch as it precludes the despondence, which might have
kept the more foresighted from undertaking the enterprise, the
depression which would retard its progress, and those overwhelming
influences of terror in cases where the vivid perception of the
danger constitutes the greater part of the danger itself. Thus men
are said to have swooned and even died at the sight of a narrow
bridge, over which they had ridden, the night before, in perfect
safety; or at tracing the footmarks along the edge of a precipice
which the darkness had concealed from them.
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