nothing is so much to be avoided as a perpetual state
of inquiry and suspense.

I am, Sir,

Your humble servant,

PEGGY HEARTLESS.

No. 87. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1759.

Of what we know not, we can only judge by what we know. Every novelty
appears more wonderful as it is more remote from any thing with which
experience or testimony has hitherto acquainted us; and, if it passes
further beyond the notions that we have been accustomed to form, it
becomes at last incredible.

We seldom consider that human knowledge is very narrow, that national
manners are formed by chance, that uncommon conjunctures of causes
produce rare effects, or that what is impossible at one time or place
may yet happen in another. It is always easier to deny than to inquire.
To refuse credit confers for a moment an appearance of superiority,
which every little mind is tempted to assume when it may be gained so
cheaply as by withdrawing attention from evidence, and declining the
fatigue of comparing probabilities. The most pertinacious and vehement
demonstrator may be wearied in time by continual negation; and
incredulity, which an old poet, in his address to Raleigh, calls _the
wit of fools_, obtunds the argument which it cannot answer, as woolsacks
deaden arrows though they cannot repel them.

Many relations of travellers have been slighted as fabulous, till more
frequent voyages have confirmed their veracity; and it may reasonably be
imagined, that many ancient historians are unjustly suspected of
falsehood, because our own times afford nothing that resembles what they
tell[1].

Had only the writers of antiquity informed us, that there was once a
nation in which the wife lay down upon the burning pile only to mix her
ashes with those of her husband, we should have thought it a tale to be
told with that of Endymion's commerce with the moon. Had only a single
traveller related, that many nations of the earth were black, we should
have thought the accounts of the Negroes and of the Phoenix equally
credible. But of black men the numbers are too great who are now
repining under English cruelty; and the custom of voluntary cremation is
not yet lost among the ladies of India.

Few narratives will either to men or women appear more incredible than
the histories of the Amazons; of female nations of whose constitution it
was the essential and fundamental law to exclude men from all
participation, either of publick affairs or domestick bus