SKETCHES
OF
IMPOSTURE, DECEPTION,
AND
CREDULITY.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
Effects of Incredulity and Credulity—Knowledge supposed to be Remembrance—Purpose of this Volume—Progress of rational Belief—Resemblance of Error to Truth—Contagious Nature of Excitement—Improved State of the Human Mind in Modern Times.
Incredulity has been said, by Aristotle, to be the foundation of all wisdom. The truth of this assertion might safely be disputed; but, on the other hand, to say that credulity is the foundation of all folly, is an assertion more consonant to experience, and may be more readily admitted; and the contemplation of this subject forms a curious chapter in the history of the human mind.
A certain extent of credulity, or, more properly, belief, may, indeed, be considered as absolutely necessary to the well-being of social communities; for universal scepticism would be universal distrust. Nor could knowledge ever have arrived at its present amazing height, had every intermediate step in the ladder of science, from profound ignorance and slavery of intellect, been disputed with bigoted incredulity.
It has been said, that all knowledge is remembrance, and all ignorance forgetfulness,—alluding to the universal knowledge which, in the opinion of the schoolmen, our first father, Adam, possessed before the fall,—and that the subsequent invention of arts and sciences was only a partial recovery or recollection, as it were, of what had been originally well known. The undefined aspirations of many minds, to seek for what is distant and least understood, in preference to that near at hand and more in unison with our general state of knowledge, seem to favour this idea.
It will be the endeavour of the following pages to show that the credulity of the many—in some cases synonymous with the foolish—has been, from the beginning, most readily imposed upon by the clever and designing few. It is a curious task to investigate the gradual developement of rational belief, as exhibited in the proportionate disbelief and exposure of those things which, in earlier ages, were considered points of faith, and to doubt which was a dangerous heresy; and how, at first, the arts and sciences were weighed down and the advantages to be derived from them neutralized, by the fallacies of misconception or fanaticism. We are, in spite of ourselves, the creatures of imagination, and the victims of prejudice, which has been justly called the wrong bias of the soul, that effectually keeps it from coming near the path of truth; a task the more difficult to accomplish, since error often bears so near a resemblance to it. Error, indeed, always borrows something of truth, to make her more acceptable to the world, seldom appearing in her native deformity; and the subtilty of grand deceivers has always been shown in grafting their greatest errors on some material truths, and with such dexterity, that Ithuriel’s spear alone, whose touch