Blair Collection > Critical dissertations on the origin, antiquities, language, government, manners, and religion, of the antient Caledonians, their posterity the Picts, and the British and Irish Scots

Of the Religion of the^ &c. 3 1
DISSERTATION XIX,
Of the Religion of the antient Ca-
ledonians.
SOME ingenious writers have been of opinion
that Druidifm was never eftablifhed in Caledo-
nia. It is difficult to fay, why aiTertions fo ill-founded
were obtruded upon the world, if it was not to de-
duce the honour of the prefent prevalent fyftcm of
free-thinking from our remotell anceftors. Irre-
ligion is never one of the virtues of favage life :
we muft defcend to polifhed times for that fcepti-
cifm which arifes from the pride and vanity natu-
ral to the cultivated flate of the human mind. It
is not now my bufinefs to enter into a controverfy
with thofe who affirm that religion is no more than
an engine of policy, and that the gods of all na-
tions fprung from the timidity of the multitude in
the firft ftages of fociety.
Had the inhabitants of Britain rofe originally
like vegetables out of the earth, according to the
opinion of Caefar and Tacitus, there might have
been fome foundation for fuppofing that the Drui-
dical fyflem of religion was never known in Calc-
U 4 donia.