BY THE AUTHOR OF NATURAL HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASM. αἱ μετὰ πάθους διαστροφαί NEW-YORK: PUBLISHED BY JONATHAN LEAVITT, 181 BROADWAY. BOSTON: CROCKER & BREWSTER, 47 WASHINGTON-STREET. PREFACE. STRICT propriety seldom allows an author to obtrude upon the public the circumstances that may have attended and controlled his literary labours. Yet the rule may give way to special reasons; and in the present instance the reader is requested courteously to admit an exception. More than twelve years ago the Author projected a work which should at one view exhibit the several principal forms of spurious or corrupted religion. But discouraged by the magnitude and difficulty of such a task, he after a while, yet not without much reluctance, abandoned the undertaking. Nevertheless the subject continually pressed upon his mind. At length he selected a single portion of the general theme, and adventured-NATURAL HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASM. Emboldened to proceed, the Author almost immediately entered upon the nearly connected and sequent subject which fills the present volume. Yet fearing lest, by an unskilful or unadvised treatment of certain arduous matters which it involves, he might create embarrassment where most he desired to do good, he laid aside his materials. But in the interval, by extending his researches concerning the rise and progress of the fatal errors that have obscured our holy religion, the Author greatly enhanced his wish to achieve his first purpose. He therefore resumed FANATICISM; which is now offered to the candour of the Reader. He next proposes, in advancing towards the completion of his original design, to take in hand SUPERSTITION, and its attendant CREDULITY. A natural transition leads from Superstition and Credulity to SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM. The principal perversions of Religion having thus been reviewed, it would be proper to describe that CORRUPTION OF MORALS which, in different modes, has resulted from the overthrow of genuine piety. There would then only remain to be considered SCEPTICISM, or Philosophic Irreligion; and the series will embrace all that the Author deems indispensable to the undertaking he has so long meditated. FANATICISM. SECTION I. MOTIVES OF THE WORK. THE maladies of the mind are not to be healed any more than those of the body unless by a friendly hand. But through a singular infelicity it too often happens that these evils, deep as they are, and difficult of cure, fall under a treatment that is hostile and malign, or, what is worse, frivolous. Especially does this disadvantage attach to that peculiar class of mental disorders which, as they are more profound in their origin than any other, and more liable to extreme aggravation, demand in whoever would relieve them, not only the requisite skill, but the very purest intentions. Vitiated religious sentiments have too much connexion with the principles of our physical constitution to be in every case effectively amended by methods that are merely theological; and yet, drawing their strength as they do from great truths with which the physiologist has ordinarily little or no personal acquaintance, and which perhaps he holds in contempt, he is likely to err, as well in theory as in practice, when he takes them in hand. How profound soever or exact may be his knowledge of human nature, whether as matter of science or as matter of observation, the |