And the stupendous power of these amazingly
perfect systems for destroying the capacity for original thought cannot be
fully realized until the mind has been brought to dwell upon the fact that
the greatest eras of human progress have begun with the advent of those
who have led successful insurrection; nor can the dazzling genius of these
brilliant exceptions be appreciated, unless it be remembered how
infinitely small has been the number of those among mankind who, having
been once drilled to rigid conformity, have not lapsed into automatism,
but have been endowed with the mental energy to revolt. On the other hand,
though ecclesiastics have differed widely in the details of the training
they have enforced upon the faithful, they have agreed upon this cardinal
principle: they have uniformly seized upon the education of the young, and
taught the child to revere the rites in which he was made to partake
before he could reason upon their meaning, for they understood well that
the habit of abject submission to authority, when firmly rooted in
infancy, would ripen into a second nature in after years, and would almost
invariably last till death.
But this manual of religion, this deadening of the soul by making
mechanical prayers and genuflexions the gauge of piety, has always roused
the deepest indignation in the great reformers; and, un-appalled by the
most ghastly perils, they have never ceased to exhort mankind to cast off
the slavery of custom and emancipate the mind.
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