[982] Juvenal, Sat. x. 174:—
“Creditur olim
Velificatus Athos, et quantum Græcia mendax
Audet in historiâ,” etc.
[983] Colonel Sleeman observes, respecting the Hindoo historical mind—“History to this people is all a fairy tale.” (Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, vol. i. ch. ix. p. 70.) And again, “The popular poem of the Ramaen describes the abduction of the heroine by the monster king of Ceylon, Rawun; and her recovery by means of the monkey general, Hunnooman. Every word of this poem, the people assured me was written, if not by the hand of the Deity himself, at least by his inspiration, which was the same thing—and it must consequently be true. Ninety-nine out of a hundred, among the Hindoos, implicitly believe, not only every word of the poem, but every word of every poem that has ever been written in Sanscrit. If you ask a man whether he really believes any very egregious absurdity quoted from these books, he replies, with the greatest naïveté in the world, Is 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; 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 time, 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 Romans in the days of Socrates or Cicero: the only difference is, that among the Hindoos a greater number of the questions which interest mankind are brought under the head of religion.” (Sleeman, Rambles, etc., vol. i. ch. xxvi. p. 227: compare vol. ii. ch. v. p. 51; viii. p. 97.)
[984] Lord Lyttleton, in commenting on the tales of the Irish bards, in his History of Henry II., has the following just remarks (book iv. vol. iii. p. 13, quarto): “One may reasonably suppose that in MSS. written since the Irish received the Roman letters from St. Patrick, some traditional truths recorded before by the bards in their unwritten poems may have been preserved to our times. Yet these cannot be so separated from many fabulous stories derived from the same sources, as to obtain a firm credit; it not being sufficient to establish the authority of suspected traditions, that they can be shown not to be so improbable or absurd as others with which they are mixed—since there may be specious as well as senseless fictions. Nor can a poet or bard, who lived in the sixth or seventh century after Christ, if his poem is still extant, be any voucher for facts supposed to have happened before the incarnation; though his evidence (allowing for poetical license) may be received on such matters as come within his own time, or the remembrance of old men with whom he conversed. The most judicious historians pay no regard to the Welsh or British traditions delivered by Geoffrey of Monmouth, though it is not impossible but that some of these may be true.”
One definition of a mythe given by Plutarch coincides exactly with a specious fiction: Ὁ μῦθος εἶναι βούλεται λόγος ψευδὴς ἐοικὼς ἀληθινῷ (Plutarch, Bellone an pace clariores fuerunt Athenienses, p. 348).
“Der Grund-Trieb des Mythus (Creuzer justly expresses it) das Gedachte in ein Geschehenes umzusetzen.” (Symbolik der Alten Welt, sect. 43. p. 99.)
[985] In reference to the loose statements of the Highlanders, Dr. Johnson observes, “He that goes into the Highlands with a mind naturally acquiescent, and a credulity eager for wonders, may perhaps come back with an opinion very different from mine; for the inhabitants, knowing the ignorance of all strangers in their language and antiquities, are perhaps not very scrupulous adherents to truth; yet I do not say that they deliberately speak studied falsehood, or have a settled purpose to deceive. They have acquired and considered little, and do not always feel their own ignorance. They are not much accustomed to be interrogated by others, and seem never to have thought of interrogating themselves; so that if they do not know what they tell to be true, they likewise do not distinctly perceive it to be false. Mr. Boswell was very diligent in his inquiries, and the result of his investigations was, that the answer to the second question was commonly such as nullified the answer to the first.” (Journey to the Western Islands, p. 272, 1st edit., 1775).
[986] I considered this position more at large in an article in the “Westminster Review” for May, 1843, on Niebuhr’s Greek Legends, with which article much in the present chapter will be found to coincide.