Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/463

 TRUTH INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM FICTION 43 J and the maximum of negative presumption : we may diminish the latter by conjectural omissions and interpolations, but we can- not by any artifice increase the former : the narrative ceases to be incredible, but it still remains uncertified, a mere common- place possibility. Nor is fiction always, or essentially, extrava- gant and incredible. It is often not only plausible and coherent but even more like truth (if a paradoxical phrase may be allow- ed) than truth itself. Nor can we, in the absence of any extrin- Bic test, reckon upon any intrinsic mark to discriminate the one from the other. 1 it not written in the book ; and how should it be there written, if not true ? The Hindoo religion reposes upon an entire prostration of mind, that continual and habitual surrender of the reasoning faculties, which we are accustomed to make occasionally, while engaged at the theatre, or in the perusal of works of fiction. We allow the scenes, characters, and incidents, to pass before our mind's eye, and move our feelings without stopping a moment to ask whether they are real or true. There is only this difference that with people of education among us, even in such short intervals of illusion or abandon, any extravagance in the acting, or flagrant improbability in the fiction, destroys the charm, breaks the spell by which we have been so mysteriously bound, and restores us to reason and the realities of ordinary life. With the Hindoos, on the contrary, the greater the improbability, the more monstrous and preposterous the fiction the greater is the charm it has over their minds ; and the greater their learning in the Sanscrit, the more are they under the influence of this charm. Believing all to be written by the Deity, or under his inspirations, and the men and things of former days to have been very different from men and things of the present day. and the heroes of these fables to have been demigods, or people endowed with powers far superior to those of the ordinary men of their own day the analogies of nature are never for a moment considered j nor do questions of probability, or possibility, according to those analogies, ever obtrude to dispel the charm with which they are so pleasingly bound. They go on through life reading and talking of these monstrous fictions, which shock the taste and understanding of other nations, without ever questioning the truth of one single incident, or hearing it questioned. There was a tim*, and that not far distant, when it was the same in England, and in every other European nation ; and there are, I am afraid, some parts of Europe where it is so still. But the Hindoo faith, so far as religious questions are concerned, is not more capacious or absurd than that of the Greeks or Ro- mans in the days of Socrates or Cicero : the only difference is, that among the Hindoos a greater number of the questions which interest mankind ara brought under the head of religion." (Sleeman, Rambles, etc., rol. i. ch. xxvi. p. 227 : compare vol. ii. ch. v. p. 51 ; viii. p. 97.) 1 Lord Lyttleton, in commenting on the tales of the Irish bards, in hi*