The influence of the enlightened few will never be able to banish superstition from the unenlightened multitude. To eradicate it the torch of knowledge must be lit in every mind. So far from superstitious prejudices being removed by the authority of philosophers, they are contracted by them from the illiterate, through the influence of early education, and are persisted in through a disposition in the human mind to regard with some degree of favor that which has been believed in all ages, however absurd in reason. Addison affords a remarkable instance of the influence of popular belief over a philosophic mind. We learn from the Spectator[1] that he did not entirely refuse his assent to the existence of ghosts, apparitions and witchcraft. In the time of this eminent writer, a period distinguished in the history of English Literature, there was scarce a village in England in which witchcraft was not accredited; so little authority did the great men of that age, who by their writings have had an acknowledged influence on the moral improvement of the nation, exert in eradicating superstition from the minds of the unenlightened common people. [Footnote 1: Nos. 110 and 117.] Education exerts a negative agency in promoting human happiness by removing superstition, one of its greatest enemies. But by expanding the mind to more enlarged conceptions of the order and beauty of the universe, it makes a real addition to the sum of human enjoyments. Our capacities are at best but extremely limited. It has been permitted to us however, to explore the threshold of the labyrinth of nature. Our discoveries present us at every step with ends wisely and beneficently planned, and means adapted with the most admirable simplicity and economy to the production of those ends. No human investigation has ever advanced so far as to point out aught of error in the arrangement of the system of things around us. Every thing, whose purpose we can understand, bears the impress of wisdom. How elevating to the mind of man to rise from the contemplation of this visible order, to a Being on whom we can rely with the utmost surety as having arranged every thing, not only in our small planet but in the whole immensity of creation, with the same admirable wisdom and economy which our limited faculties enable us to trace in the small part which falls under our immediate inspection! Yet to the vulgar mind is denied this ennobling feeling. The ignorant man "marks not the mighty hand That ever-busy wheels the silent spheres; Works in the secret deep; shoots, streaming, thence The fair profusion that o'erspreads the spring: Flings from the sun direct the flaming day; Feeds every creature; hurls the tempest forth; And as on earth this grateful change revolves, With transport touches all the springs of life."