Page:Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buonaparte 11th ed - Richard Whately (1874).djvu/34

 worthy of credit. "What, for instance, would the great Hume, or any of the philosophers of his school, have said, if they had found, in the antique records of any nation, such a passage as this?—"There was a certain man of Corsica, whose name was Napoleon, and he was one of the chief captains of the host of the French; and he gathered together an army, and went and fought against Egypt; but when the king of Britain heard thereof, he sent ships of war and valiant men to fight against the French in Egypt. So they warred against them, and prevailed, and strengthened the hands of the rulers of the land against the French, and drave away Napoleon from before the city of Acre. Then Napoleon left the captains and the army that were in Egypt, and fled, and returned back to France. So the French people took Napoleon, and made him ruler over them, and he became exceeding great, insomuch as there was none like him of all that had ruled over France before."

What, I say, would Hume have thought of this, especially if he had been told that it was at this day generally credited? Would he not have confessed that he had been mistaken in supposing there was a peculiarly blind credulity and prejudice in favor of everything that is accounted sacred; for that, since even professed sceptics swallow implicitly such a story as this, it appears there must be a still blinder prejudice in favor of everything that is not accounted sacred?

Suppose, again, we found in this history such passages as the following: "And it came to pass after these things that Napoleon strengthened himself, and gathered together another host instead of that which he had lost, and went and warred against the Prussians, and the Russians, and the Austrians,