Only in proportion as I mean
more, I shall certainly appear more absurd in my statement; and at last
when I get unendurably significant, all practical persons will agree that
I was talking mere nonsense from the beginning, and never meant anything
at all.
3. It is just possible, however, also, that the story-teller may all
along have meant nothing but what he said; and that, incredible as the
events may appear, he himself literally believed--and expected you also
to believe--all this about Hercules, without any latent moral or history
whatever. And it is very necessary, in reading traditions of this kind,
to determine, first of all, whether you are listening to a simple person,
who is relating what, at all events, he believes to be true, (and may,
therefore, possibly have been so to some extent), or to a reserved
philosopher, who is veiling a theory of the universe under the grotesque
of a fairy tale. It is, in general, more likely that the first
supposition should be the right one: simple and credulous persons are,
perhaps fortunately, more common than philosophers; and it is of the
highest importance that you should take their innocent testimony as it
was meant, and not efface, under the graceful explanation which your
cultivated ingenuity may suggest, either the evidence their story may
contain (such as it is worth) of an extraordinary event having really
taken place, or the unquestionable light which it will cast upon the
character of the person by whom it was frankly believed.
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