Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 1.djvu/150

 V "A NATIVE THINKER"* ON IDOLATRY. (1891.)

Even good Homers sometimes nod; and in these days, when it is the rule or fashion to defend the indefensible, to justify the unjustifiable, to force or infuse an esoteric meaning even into nursery tales, to read philosophy into the veriest absurdities and most indecent and immoral customs or institutions, it is no wonder that even the rarest thinkers should occasionally lose the balance of their minds. Headers of Macaulay will clearly remember the striking comparison he draws between the genii in the Arabian tale and Johnson’s gigantic mind, how, at one time, free from all prepossession, it would overshadow both earth and sea, but, at another, under the potent seal and spell of a cherished idea, wring and dwarf itself into a narrow vessel. Still, it may well