By another name, and makes it true or false;
Turns truth to falsehood, falsehood into truth,
By virtue of the Babylonian's tooth.

The inventor of the watch, if this doctrine be true, did not in
reality invent it; he only looked on, while the blind causes, the only
true artists, were unfolding themselves. So must it have been too with
my friend Allston, when he sketched his picture of the dead man
revived by the bones of the prophet Elijah. So must it have been with
Mr. Southey and Lord Byron, when the one fancied himself composing his
Roderick, and the other his Childe Harold. The same must hold good of
all systems of philosophy; of all arts, governments, wars by sea and
by land; in short, of all things that ever have been or that ever will
be produced. For, according to this system, it is not the affections
and passions that are at work, in as far as they are sensations or
thoughts. We only fancy, that we act from rational resolves, or
prudent motives, or from impulses of anger, love, or generosity. In
all these cases the real agent is a something-nothing-everything,
which does all of which we know, and knows nothing of all that itself
does.

The existence of an infinite spirit, of an intelligent and holy will,
must, on this system, be mere articulated motions of the air. For as
the function of the human understanding is no other than merely to
appear to itself to combine and to apply the phaenomena of the
association; and as these derive all their reality from the primary
sensations; and the sensations again all their reality from the
impressions ab extra; a God not visible, audible, or tangible, can
exist only in the sounds and letters that form his name and
attributes. If in ourselves there be no such faculties as those of the