Page:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - Hume (1748).djvu/199

 they are always found chiefly to abound amongst ignorant and barbarous Nations; or if a civiliz'd People has ever given Admission to any of them, that People will be found to have receiv'd them from ignorant and barbarous Ancestors, who transmitted them with that inviolable Sanction and Authority, which always attends antient and receiv'd Opinions. When we peruse the first Histories of all Nations, we are apt to imagine ourselves transported into some new World, where the whole Frame of Nature is disjointed, and every Element performs its Operations in a different Manner, from what it does at present. Battles, Revolutions, Pestilences, Famines, and Deaths are never the Effects of those natural Causes, which we experience. Prodigies, Omens, Oracles, Judgments quite obscure and over-shadow the few natural Events, that are intermingled with them. But as these grow thinner every Page, in Proportion as we advance nearer the enlighten'd Ages of Science and Knowledge, we soon learn, that there is nothing mysterious or supernatural in the Case, but that all proceeds from the usual Propensity of Mankind towards the Marvellous and Extraordinary, and that tho' this Inclination may at Intervals receive a Check from Sense and Learning, it can never be thoroughly extirpated from human Nature.