Ossian Collection > Thoughts on the origin and descent of the Gael

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iiaries of truth, are too feeble to counteract or
dispel from the imaginations of the ignorant mul-
titude. The triumphs of truth over error are re-
served for those eras of the world, when, by-
means of inventions, wliether ascribable to pro-
pitious casualty or to the ingenious contrivances
of the human mind, knowledge is rendered of
easy acquisition, and, when aided by a free com-
munication of sentiments, becomes universally
diffused, and produces necessarily a total revolu-
tion in the opinions of mankind, who thencefor-
ward are to be guided, not by their former pre-
judices, prepossessions, and the arts of mystical
persuasion, whether political or rehgious, but by
regulations of tangible and palpable good, and
by a train of policy plainly and obviously con-
sistent with the interest of the individuals com-
posing the great whole. In proportion as know-
ledge prevails, it will, without the exception of
races of men, operate the releasement of the
mind from the thraldom of assumed authority,
and prove to the rulers of the world, that uni-
versally mankind perceiving the rights of nature,
and arrived at a just conception of the genuine
basis of the fabric of political society, will feel
indignant against the abettors of systems found-
ed on prejudices and errors, inculcated by artifices
practised, in the ages of blind superstition, upon
the ignorance and weakness of deluded minds.
How much soever the human race may seem to
be diversified by manners and customs, opinions