I Plainly Saw That She Was Not An Unhesitating
Follower Of Her Own System, And I Even Fancied That I Could
Distinguish The Brief Moments During Which She Contrived To Believe
In Herself, From Those Long And Less Happy Intervals In Which Her
Own Reason Was Too Strong For Her.
As for the lady's faith in astrology and magic science, you are not
for a moment to suppose that this implied any aberration of
intellect.
She believed these things in common with those around
her, for she seldom spoke to anybody except crazy old dervishes,
who received her alms, and fostered her extravagancies, and even
when (as on the occasion of my visit) she was brought into contact
with a person entertaining different notions, she still remained
uncontradicted. This entourage and the habit of fasting from books
and newspapers were quite enough to make her a facile recipient of
any marvellous story.
I think that in England we are scarcely sufficiently conscious of
the great debt we owe to the wise and watchful press which presides
over the formation of our opinions, and which brings about this
splendid result, namely, that in matters of belief the humblest of
us are lifted up to the level of the most sagacious, so that really
a simple cornet in the Blues is no more likely to entertain a
foolish belief about ghosts or witchcraft, or any other
supernatural topic, than the Lord High Chancellor or the Leader of
the House of Commons. How different is the intellectual regime of
Eastern countries!
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