p.

5.
The 'nostrum' of the mountebank will he preferred to the prescription of the regular practitioner.

Why is this?
Because there is something in the authoritative arrogance of the pretender, by which ignorance is overawed.
This is something; and true as far as it goes; that is, however, but a very little way.

The great power of both spiritual and physical mountebanks rests on that irremovable property of human nature, in force of which indefinite instincts and sufferings find no echo, no resting-place, in the definite and comprehensible.

Ignorance unnecessarily enlarges the sphere of these: but a sphere there is,--facts of mind and cravings of the soul there are,--in which the wisest man seeks help from the indefinite, because it is nearer and more like the infinite, of which he is made the image:--for even we are infinite, even in our finiteness infinite, as the Father in his infinity.