e only way to escape the dangers of revolution is by
directing its forces and giving it useful work to do.

THE REBELLION: ITS CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES

1864

In spite of the popular theory that nothing is so fallacious as
circumstantial evidence, there is no man of observation who would not
deem it more trustworthy than any human testimony, however honest,
which was made up from personal recollection. The actors in great
affairs are seldom to be depended on as witnesses, either to the order
of events or their bearing upon results; for even where selfish
interest is not to be taken into account, the mythic instinct erelong
begins to shape things as they ought to have been, rather than as they
were. This is true even of subjects in which we have no personal
interest, and not only do no two men describe the same street-scene in
the same way, but the same man, unless prosaic to a degree below the
freezing-point of Tupper, will never do it twice in the same way. Few
men, looking into their old diaries, but are astonished at the
contrast, sometimes even the absolute unlikeness, between the matters
of fact recorded there and their own recollection of them. Shortly
after the battle of Lexington it was the interest of the Colonies to
make the British troops not only wanton, but unresisted, aggressors;
and if primitive Christians could be manufactured by affidavit, so
large a body of them ready to turn the other cheek also was never
gathered as in the minute-men before the meeting-house on the 19th of
April, 1775. The Anglo-Saxon could not fight comfortably without the
law on his side. But later, when the battle became a matter of local
pride, the muskets that had been fired at the Redcoats under Pitcairn
almost rivalled in number the pieces of furniture that came over in the
Mayflower. Indeed, whoever has talked much with Revolutionary
pensioners knows that those honored veterans were no less remarkable
for imagination than for patriotism. It should seem that there is,
perhaps, nothing on which so little reliance is to be placed as facts,
especially when related by one who saw them. It is no slight help to
our charity to recollect that, in disputable matters, every man sees
according to his prejudices, and is stone-blind to whatever he did not
expect or did not mean to see. Even where no personal bias can be
suspected, contemporary and popular evidence is to be taken with great
caution, so exceedingly careless are men