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INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC.
PROP. VII.————
the common and familiar phenomena of light; she is deaf to the common and familiar phenomena of sound: she has eyes only for the lightning; ears only for the thunder. She asks with eager curiosity,
Quæ fulminis esset origo,—
Jupiter, an venti, discussâ nube tonarent?
But she leaves unquestioned the normal or everyday presentments of the senses and the universe; she pays the tribute of admiration to nature's exceptions far more promptly than to her majestic rule.
We study the strange rather than the familiar, hence truth escapes us.6. It is thus that uncultivated men neglect their own household divinities, their tutelary Penates, and go gadding after idols that are strange. But this proclivity is not confined to them; it is a malady which all flesh is heir to. It is the besetting infirmity of the whole brotherhood of man. We naturally suppose that truth lies in the distance, and not at our very feet; that it is hid from our view, not by its proximity, but by its remoteness; that it is a commodity of foreign importation, and not of domestic growth. The farther it is fetched the better do we like it—the more genuine are we disposed to think it. The extraordinary moves us more, and is more relished than the ordinary. The heavens are imagined to hold sublimer secrets than the earth. We conceive that what is the astonishing to us, is also the astonishing in itself; thus truly making
