" Mere
physical research, its achievements, its certitudes, even its
conflicting and self-contradictory hypotheses, having got lumped
together in many minds under this one title Science, the title is now
sacred. It is used as a priestly title, as an immediate estopper to
doubt or criticism.
The next step is a very interesting one for the student of psychical
pathology to note. It seems to be a disease as native and universal to
the human mind as is the decay of the teeth to the human body. It seems
as though we all must suffer somewhat from it, and most of us suffer a
great deal from it, though in a cool aspect we easily perceive it to be
a lesion of thought. And this second step is as follows:
The whole lump having been given its sacred title and erected into an
infallible authority, which you are to accept as directly superior to
yourself and all personal sources of information, there is attributed to
this idol a number of attributes. We give it a soul, and a habit and
manners which do not attach to its stuff at all. The projection of this
imagined living character in our authority is comparable to what we also
do with mountains, statues, towns, and so forth. Our living
individuality lends individuality to them. I might here digress to
discuss whether this habit of the mind were not a distorted reflection
of some truth, and whether, indeed, there be not such beings as demons
or the souls of things.
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