Attention to these considerations will probably enable us to discover some of the fallacies which have obscured and bewildered this important subject. When the impression, which is thus allowed to influence the mind, is one which has not been received by the judgment, upon due examination, and adequate evidence of its truth,--this is enthusiasm, not faith.--Our present course of inquiry does not lead us to treat of the notions which have, in various individuals, been thus allowed to usurp the place of truth. To those who would preserve themselves from the influence of such, the first great inquiry, respecting their own mental impressions, ought to be,--are they facts,--and on what evidence do they rest which can satisfy a sound understanding that they are so. On the other hand is to be avoided an error, not less dangerous than the wildest fancies of the enthusiast, and not less unworthy of a regulated mind. This consists in treating real and important truths as if they were visions of the imagination, and thus dismissing them, without examination, from the influence which they ought to produce upon the moral feelings. It is singular also to remark, how these two modifications of character may be traced to a condition of the reasoning powers, essentially the same. The former receives a fiction of the imagination, and rests upon it as truth. The latter, acting upon some prejudice or mental impression, which has probably no better foundation, puts away real and important truths without any examination of the evidence on which they are founded. The misapplication of the reasoning powers is the same in both. It consists in proceeding upon mere impression, without exercising the judgment on the question of its evidence,--or on the facts and considerations which are opposed to it. Two characters of a very opposite description thus meet in that mental condition, which draws them equally, though in different directions, astray from the truth.