Chapter 26

       That it is Folly to Measure Truth and Error by Our Own Capacity

      Table of Contents

      ’Tis not, perhaps, without reason, that we attribute facility of belief and easiness of persuasion to simplicity and ignorance: for I fancy I have heard belief compared to the impression of a seal upon the soul, which by how much softer and of less resistance it is, is the more easy to be impressed upon.

      “Ut necesse est, lancem in Libra, ponderibus impositis,

       deprimi, sic animum perspicuis cedere.”

      [“As the scale of the balance must give way to the weight that

       presses it down, so the mind yields to demonstration.”

       —Cicero, Acad., ii. 12.]

      By how much the soul is more empty and without counterpoise, with so much greater facility it yields under the weight of the first persuasion. And this is the reason that children, the common people, women, and sick folks, are most apt to be led by the ears. But then, on the other hand, ’tis a foolish presumption to slight and condemn all things for false that do not appear to us probable; which is the ordinary vice of such as fancy themselves wiser than their neighbours. I was myself once one of those; and if I heard talk of dead folks walking, of prophecies, enchantments, witchcrafts, or any other story I had no mind to believe:

      “Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas,

       Nocturnos lemures, portentaque Thessala,”

      [“Dreams, magic terrors, marvels, sorceries, Thessalian prodigies.”

       —Horace. Ep. ii. 3, 208.]

      I presently pitied the poor people that were abused by these follies. Whereas I now find, that I myself was to be pitied as much, at least, as they; not that experience has taught me anything to alter my former opinions, though my curiosity has endeavoured that way; but reason has instructed me, that thus resolutely to condemn anything for false and impossible, is arrogantly and impiously to circumscribe and limit the will of God, and the power of our mother nature, within the bounds of my own capacity, than which no folly can be greater. If we give the names of monster and miracle to everything our reason cannot comprehend, how many are continually presented before our eyes? Let us but consider through what clouds, and as it were groping in the dark, our teachers lead us to the knowledge of most of the things about us; assuredly we shall find that it is rather custom than knowledge that takes away their strangeness—

      “Jam nemo, fessus saturusque videndi,

       Suspicere in coeli dignatur lucida templa;”

      [“Weary of the sight, now no one deigns to look up to heaven’s lucid

       temples.”—Lucretius, ii. 1037. The text has ‘statiate videnai’]

      and that if those things were now newly presented to us, we should think them as incredible, if not more, than any others.

      “Si nunc primum mortalibus adsint

       Ex improviso, si sint objecta repente,

       Nil magis his rebus poterat mirabile dici,

       Aute minus ante quod auderent fore credere gentes.”

      [Lucretius, ii. 1032. The sense of the passage is in the preceding

       sentence.]

      He that had never seen a river, imagined the first he met with to be the sea; and the greatest things that have fallen within our knowledge, we conclude the extremes that nature makes of the kind.

      “Scilicet et fluvius qui non est maximus, ei’st

       Qui non ante aliquem majorem vidit; et ingens

       Arbor, homoque videtur, et omnia de genere omni

       Maxima quae vidit quisque, haec ingentia fingit.”

      [“A little river seems to him, who has never seen a larger river, a

       mighty stream; and so with other things—a tree, a man—anything

       appears greatest to him that never knew a greater.”—Idem, vi. 674.]

      “Consuetudine oculorum assuescunt animi, neque admirantur,

       neque requirunt rationes earum rerum, quas semper vident.”

      [“Things grow familiar to men’s minds by being often seen; so that

       they neither admire nor are they inquisitive about things they daily

       see.”—Cicero, De Natura Deor., lib. ii. 38.]

      The novelty, rather than the greatness of things, tempts us to inquire into their causes. We are to judge with more reverence, and with greater acknowledgment of our own ignorance and infirmity, of the infinite power of nature. How many unlikely things are there testified by people worthy of faith, which, if we cannot persuade ourselves absolutely to believe, we ought at least to leave them in suspense; for, to condemn them as impossible, is by a temerarious presumption to pretend to know the utmost bounds of possibility. Did we rightly understand the difference betwixt the impossible and the unusual, and betwixt that which is contrary to the order and course of nature and contrary to the common opinion of men, in not believing rashly, and on the other hand, in not being too incredulous, we should observe the rule of ‘Ne quid nimis’ enjoined by Chilo.

      When we find in Froissart, that the Comte de Foix knew in Bearn the defeat of John, king of Castile, at Jubera the next day after it happened, and the means by which he tells us he came to do so, we may be allowed to be a little merry at it, as also at what our annals report, that Pope Honorius, the same day that King Philip Augustus died at Mantes, performed his public obsequies at Rome, and commanded the like throughout Italy, the testimony of these authors not being, perhaps, of authority enough to restrain us. But what if Plutarch, besides several examples that he produces out of antiquity, tells us, he knows of certain knowledge, that in the time of Domitian, the news of the battle lost by Antony in Germany was published at Rome, many days’ journey from thence, and dispersed throughout the whole world, the same day it was fought; and if Caesar was of opinion, that it has often happened, that the report has preceded the incident, shall we not say, that these simple people have