Page:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - Hume (1748).djvu/200

 'Tis strange, a judicious Reader is apt to say, upon the Perusal of these wonderful Historians, that such prodigious Events never happen in our Days. But 'tis nothing strange, I hope, that Men should lye in all Ages. You must surely have seen Instances enow of that Frailty. You have yourself heard many such prodigious Relations started, which being treated with Scorn by all the Wise and Judicious, have at last been abandon'd, even by the Vulgar. Be assur'd, that those renown'd Lyes, which have spread and flourish'd to such a monstrous Height, arose from like Beginnings; but being sown on a more proper Soil, shot up at last into Prodigies almost equal to those, which they relate.

'Twas a wise Policy in that cunning Impostor, Alexander, who, tho' now forgotten, was once so famous, to lay the first Scene of his Impostures in Paphlagonia, where, as Lucian tells us, the People were extremely ignorant and stupid, and ready to swallow even the grossest Delusion. People at a Distance, who are weak enough to think the Matter at all worth Enquiry, have no Opportunity of receiving better Information. The Stories come magnify'd to them by a hundred Circumstances. Fools are industrious to propagate the Delusion; while the Wise and Learned are contented, in general, to deride its Absurdity, without informing themselves of the particular Facts, by which it may be