Research source

It is the tendency of ignorance, in every age, to do the same thing

Date of account: Published 1857
Source: The Spirit Land
Reference: The Spirit Land · selected passage 141
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

It is the tendency of ignorance, in every age, to do the same thing. Reason demands an agent adequate to the production of every phenomenon. If she has not been furnished with sufficient data by which to arrive at a correct conclusion, imagination, influenced by a blind marvellousness, will refer the phenomena to some supernatural cause. Hence the early superstitions about chemical operations, the appearance of comets, eclipses, meteors, the 'bog lights,' and a thousand other phenomena. But as the agencies of nature have become known, and their laws and conditions of action discovered, the domination of superstition has given place to the triumph of reason and the reign of truth."

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This is a historical account assembled under the reporting and publishing conventions of its period. It may preserve testimony, hearsay, retelling and editorial interpretation together.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

A modern comparison can identify recurring descriptions and possible explanations, but the account is not treated as independently verified evidence merely because it appeared in print.

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