17. Influence of association on intellectual habits.
Intellectual habits and defects this way contracted, are not less
frequent and powerful, though less observed. Let the ideas of being and matter be strongly joined, either by
education or much thought; whilst these are still combined in the mind, what notions, what reasonings, will there
be about separate spirits? Let custom from the very childhood have joined figure and shape to the idea of God,
and what absurdities will that mind be liable to about the Deity? Let the idea of infallibility be inseparably joined
to any person, and these two constantly together possess the mind; and then one body in two places at once, shall
unexamined be swallowed for a certain truth, by an implicit faith, whenever that imagined infallible person
dictates and demands assent without inquiry.
