I turned the répulsive end which had not any cake upon it, and the swan instantly drew back. "What a selfish little creature!" the child exclaimed. Here is the whole progress of error. The child was not misled by her senses. She saw the resemblance of a swan. She erred by my erroneous communication that the bird had life, by my putting it into a vessel of water and the cake upon the magnet; an inference at which, from the resemblance to a bird and the novelty of the spectacle, she had, perhaps, by erroneous reasoning, previously arrived.

If this doctrine is well founded, how diffident ought we to be of our attainments, how vigilant to detect any leaven in the mind, how cautious ought every parent to be of the communications which he makes by his words, by his acts, or by his gifts. When a gigantic figure is seen in

the Hartz Mountains, or an inverted ship in the heavens; when thunder is heard, or lightning strikes the tree of the forest, the ignorant parent, by his conduct or his words, teaches his anxious child that these phenomena are caused by the immediate interposition of some malevolent being, and in this terror he remains fast bound from childhood to the grave, unless perchance knowledge, which is the revelation of good and evil, set him free.

Mr. Locke, in his introduction to the Essay on "The Human Understanding," seems to consider

this subject as involved in much difficulty; he says, "I shall not have misemployed myself if I can give any account of the ways whereby our understandings come to attain those notions of things we have, and can set down any measures of the certainty of our knowledge, or the grounds of those persuasions which are to be found amongst men so various, different, and wholly contradictory, and yet asserted somewhere or other with such assurance and confidence, that he that shall take a view of the opinions of mankind, observe their opposition, and at the same time consider the fondness and devotion wherewith they are embraced and the resolution and eagerness wherewith they are maintained, may, perhaps, have reason to suspect that either there is no such thing as truth at all, or that mankind have no sufficient means to attain a certain knowledge of it," but if this explanation is correct, if error insinuates itself into the mind by the erroneous communications of others and our own erroneous reasoning, the subject is not attended with any difficulty: there is no error which may not be adopted, no absurdity which may not gain entrance into the noblest mind. The Catholic religion may be the creed of Sir Thomas More, and the most deep-thinking philosopher Sir Thomas Browne, who devoted his life to the detection and exposure of vulgar errors, may believe, as he did, in witchcraft, and give evidence before the upright judge, Sir Matthew

Hale, in favour of this error, upon which a mother and her two daughters, the eldest not fourteen years of age, were condemned and executed for this imaginary crime.

§ 4.

DESTRUCTION OF ERROR.

ERROR IS RECTIFIED AS KNOWLEDGE

ADVANCES.

As error originates in the wrong communications of others and in our own defective reasoning, it must, in time, be counteracted by opposite communications and by right reason.-----When the natives of Otaheite first heard the sound of the cannon and saw the light, they fell on the earth, believing that the vessel was from heaven. Increased knowledge has rectified their error. A Bristol stone may be palmed upon a youth unacquainted with minerals, as a diamond of the first water, but he will not live long in London without discovering his error. Such are facts with

respect to natural truth.

It is the same with moral truths. When we look back upon past ages, we see the destruction of error.-Astrology, witchcraft, ghosts, are now well understood; and knowledge has set us free. -The advocates, in this land of liberty and Christianity, for the abolition of the slave trade, armed

only with truth, contended and prevailed over the selfishness which defended this disgraceful traffic. A boy from the university resolved, in the faith which removes mountains, that this abomination to the land should be abolished; and it was abolished.

It is the same with legal truths. The erroneous supposition that crime is prevented by indiscriminate severity is no more. We have abolished, and are abolishing erroneous criminal laws. The monthly massacres of young men and young women for crimes without violence no longer disgrace this noble country: there has not been one execution in London during the present year. This improvement is not confined to criminal but extends to civil law. The opinions which have been entertained for centuries in favour of the laws against usury are wavering; and, if they are ill founded, will pass away. The laws in restraint of trade are sharing the same fate. Erroneous laws against civil and religious liberty are diminishing, and, after the struggle of 2000 years, the errors respecting imprisonment for debt are discovered.

It is the same with religious truths.-Gibbon, when a boy in the university became a Catholic: when an adult, he threw away these "childish things."-Did not Christianity prevail over idolatry? "They," says the eloquent Bishop Taylor, "who had overcome the world could

not strangle Christianity. But so have I seen the sun with a little ray of distant light challenge all the power of darkness, and, without violence and noise, climbing up the hill, hath made night so to retire, that its memory was lost in the joys and sprightfulness of the morning."-Did not the Protestants contend and prevail over the Catholics? Did not Luther, with nothing but a sense of duty and the energies of his own undaunted heart to sustain him, go forth single handed against the host of a most obdurate corruption that filled all Europe; and, with no other weapons but argument and scripture, did he not shake the authority of that high pontificate which had held the kings of the earth in thraldom?— We have abolished nunneries and monasteries. The record of monastic institutions exist only in their mouldering ruins, monuments of the power of knowledge. The inquisition is no more.

The power of knowledge over error has for centuries been so well understood by philosophy, that near two thousand years ago the Jews acknowledged this power. "Take heed to yourselves, ye men of Israel," said Gamaliel : " refrain from these men, and let them alone; for if this counsel or this work be of man, it will come to nought: but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it."---This power of truth over religious error did not escape the penetrating mind of Wolsey, who, when speaking, three centuries ago,