Читать книгу Sketches of Imposture, Deception, and Credulity онлайн

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“No falsehood can endure,”

would have power to reveal them.

Many, and even contradictory, causes might be assigned for the constant disposition towards credulity; the mind is prone to believe that for which it most anxiously wishes; difficulties vanish in desire, which thus becomes frequently the main cause of success. Thus, when Prince Henry, believing his father dead, had taken the crown from his pillow, the King in reproach said to him,[1]

“Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought.”

Belief is often granted on trust to such things as are above common comprehension, by some, who would thus flatter themselves with a superiority of judgment; on the other hand, what all around put faith in, the remaining few will, from that circumstance, easily believe. This is seen in times of popular excitement, when an assertion, quite at variance with common sense or experience, will run like a wild-fire through a city, and be productive of most serious results. It would appear that this springs from that inherent power of imitation, which is singularly exemplified even in particular kinds of disease,—comitial, as they were called by the Romans, from their frequent occurrence in assemblies of the people,—and, more fatally, when it impels us to “follow a multitude to do evil.”