The Romish peasant lives begirt by supernatural
beings, who demand a large share of his time and thoughts for their
service; while the thrifty Protestant artisan or agriculturist is a
practical naturalist, keeping his eye fixed on the main chance.
Brownson would have us believe that he is morally and spiritually the
inferior of the former. For this light of common day, which now shines
upon the world, the multiplication-table, and reading and writing, are
far better than amulet, rosary, and crucifix.
After all, this light of common day, which the bards and saints so much
condemn and disdain, when subjected to the microscopic and telescopic
ken of modern science, opens as large a field for wonder and for the
imagination to revel in as did the old marvels, fables, and fictions of
the Past. The True is beginning to be found as strange, nay, stranger
than the purely Imaginative and Mythic. The Beautiful and the Good will
yet be found to be as consistent with the strictly True and Actual,
with the plain Matter-of-Fact as it is called, as they have been, in
the heroic ages of human-achievement and endurance, with the glorious
cheats and delusions that nerved man to high emprise.
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