"We conclude many things impossibilities, which yet are easie _feasables_. For by an unadvised transiliency, leaping from the effect to its remotest cause, we observe not the connexion through the interposal of more immediate causalities, which yet at last bring the extremes together without a miracle. And hereupon we hastily conclude that _impossible_ which we see not in the proximate capacity of its _efficient_."--pp. 83-84.
"From this last-noted head ariseth that other of _joyning causes with irrelevant effects_, which either refer not at all unto them, or in a remoter capacity. Hence the Indian conceived so grossly of the _letter_ that discovered his theft; and that other who thought the watch an _animal_. From hence grew the impostures of _charmes_ and _amulets_, and other insignificant ceremonies; which to this day impose upon common belief, as they did of old upon the _barbarism_ of the uncultivate _heathen_. Thus effects unusual, whose causes run under ground, and are more remote from ordinary discernment, are noted in the book of _vulgar opinion_ with _digitus Deî_, or _Dæmonis_; though they owe no other dependence to the _first_ than what is common to the whole _syntax_ of beings, nor yet any more to the _second_ than what is given it by the imagination of those unqualified judges. Thus, every unwonted _meteor_ is portentous; and the appearance of any unobserved _star_, some divine _prognostick_. Antiquity thought _thunder_ the immediate voyce of _Jupiter_, and impleaded them of impiety that referred it to natural causalities. Neither can there happen a _storm_ at this remove from _antique_ ignorance, but the multitude will have the _Devil_ in it."--pp. 84-85.
"We judge all things by our _anticipations_; and condemn or applaud them, as they agree or differ from our _first receptions_. One country laughs at the _laws_, _customs_, and _opinions_ of another as absurd and ridiculous; and the other is as charitable to them in its conceit of theirs."--pp. 93-94.
"Thus, like the hermite, we think the sun shines nowhere but in our cell, and all the world to be darkness but ourselves. We judge truth to be circumscribed by the confines of our belief, and the doctrines we were brought up in; and, with as ill manners as those of _China_, repute all the rest of the world _monoculous_. So that, what some astrologers say of our _fortunes_ and the passages of our lives, may, by the allowance of a metaphor, be said of our _opinions_--that they are written in our _stars_, being to the most as fatal as those involuntary occurrences, and as little in their power as the _placits_ of _destiny_. We are bound to our country's _opinions_ as to its _laws_; and an accustomed assent is tantamount to an infallible conclusion. He that offers to dissent shall be an _outlaw_ in reputation; and the fears of guilty Cain shall be fulfilled on him--whoever meets him _shall slay him_."--pp. 95-96.