everence; that so he
may be delivered from the unwholesome and passionate fits of wonder
which we call astonishment, the child of ignorance and fear, and the
parent of rashness and superstition. So will he keep his mind in
the attitude most fit for seizing new facts, whenever they are
presented to him. So he will be able, when he doubts of a new fact,
to examine himself whether he doubts it on just grounds; whether his
doubt may not proceed from mere self-conceit, because the fact does
not suit his preconceived theories; whether it may not proceed from
an even lower passion, which he shares (being human) with the most
uneducated; namely, from dread of the two great bogies, Novelty and
Size--novelty, which makes it hard to convince the country fellow
that in the Tropics great flowers grow on tall trees, as they do
here on herbs; size, which makes it hard to convince him that in far
lands trees are often two and three hundred feet high, simply
because he has never seen one here a hundred feet high. It is not
surprising, but saddening, to watch what power these two phantoms
have over the minds of those who would be angry if they were
supposed to be uneducated. How often has one heard the existence of
the sea-serpent declared impossible and absurd, on these very
grounds, by people who thought they were arguing scientifically:
the sea-serpent could not exist, firstly because--because it was so
odd, strange, new, in a word, and unlike anything that they had ever
seen or fancied; and, secondly, because it was so big. The first
argument would apply to a thousand new facts, which physical science
is daily proving to be true; and the second, when the reputed size
of the sea-serpent is compared with the known size of the ocean,
rather more silly than the assertion that a ten-pound pike could not
live in a half-acre pond, because it was too small to hold him. The
true arguments against the existence of a sea-serpent, namely, that
no Ophidian could live long under water, and that therefore the sea-
serpent, if he existed, would be seen continually at the surface;
and again, that the appearance taken for a sea-serpent has been
proved, again and again, to be merely a long line of rolling
porpoises--these really sound arguments would be nothing to such
people, or only be accepted as supplementing and corroborating their
dislike to believe in anything new, or anything a little bigger than
usual