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CREDULITY.
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Although it is nearly allied to Superstition, yet it differs very widely from it. Credulity is an unbounded belief in what is possible, although destitute of proof and perhaps of probability; but Superstition is a belief in what is wholly repugnant to the laws of the physical and moral world. Thus, if we believe that an inert plant possesses any remedial power, we are credulous; but if we were to fancy that, by carrying it about with us, we should become invulnerable, we should in that case be superstitious. Credulity is a far greater source of error than Superstition; for the latter must be always more limited in its influence, and can exist only, to any considerable extent, in the most ignorant portion of society; whereas the former diffuses itself through the minds of all classes, by which the rank and dignity of science are degraded, its valuable labours confounded with the vain pretensions of empiricism, and ignorance is enabled to claim for itself the prescriptive right of delivering oracles, amidst all the triumphs of truth, and the progress of philosophy. This is very lamentable; and yet, if it were even possible to remove the film that thus obscures the public discernment, I question whether the adoption of such a plan would not be outvoted by the majority of our own profession. In Chili, says Zimmerman, the physicians blow around the beds of their patients to drive away diseases; and as the people in that country believe that physic consists wholly in this wind, their doctors would take it very ill of any person who should attempt to make the method of cure more difficult—they think they know enough, when they know how to blow.