UNDUE CREDULITY.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5241, 20 February 1928, Page 2

UNDUE CREDULITY.

TO “BELIEVE” IS DANGEROUS.

INSTANCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE.

An aphorism of John Locke is “It is one thing to show a man that he is in‘error, and another to put him in possession of the truth,” which, in the vernacular of Josh Billings, is to the effect : “The trouble with most folks isn’t so much their ignorance as* knowjin’so many things that ain’t so. ‘mqst folks’ is so all-inclusive that all men believe with Pope and von Winter that ‘To err is human.’ ” So much of the sum of human knowledge is uptime that only the recklessly credulous accept, as the truth and without question, what they read and hear (says the Longview’ News).

Some time in the course of every child’s life it learns there isn’t any “Santa Claus-” And if the child becomes sufficiently civilised at maturity to lose faith in the common myths, fairy tales, and superstitions it will some day know that toads don’t give warts to those who touch them. Historians say there jvhs no Barbara Frietchie, and that the story of George Washington’s cherry tree was manufactured by a Philadelphia hack writer. Weather bureau records show there was never Rotating ice in the Delaware Rivet on Christmas Eve, though the picture of “Washington crossing the Delaware” depicts, the river full of ice cakes on the piglit of December 24. Nero did not “fiddle while Rome burned,” for the violin was' invented after Nero’s time, and Alsop’s fables were written by a Graeco-Italian named Babri us several centuries after the death of Alsop and later imitators. Cinderella’s slippers, were made of sable instead of glass, and the mask worn- by the “ Man in the Iron Mask ” was made of black velvet Bats are not blind, and the adder is not deaf.