TRUTH AND ERROR

Evening Star, Issue 21092, 3 May 1932, Page 1

TRUTH AND ERROR

A FEW) FALLACIES It seems that we are a very naive race, under the skin. The sophistication which life gives us is a veneer covering artless and sentimental minds. In this ruthless ago, which demolishes ancient beliefs, we cherish a few teachings which have acquired the permanence of fact. Mostly, it would appear, these beliefs are fallacies, the tinsel of pedagogues who have cloaked the past in a fabric of romance. Read A. S. E. Ackerman’s ‘ Fallacies,’ and you will hear—in imagination—the crash of this epoehryphal world, which, to most of us, was so much more gallant than our ow T n (writes Charles Burghart, in the ‘ Sydney Morning Herald ’). Of course, one always doubted the tale about George Washington and the cherry tree—it did not seem human, and was so unlike a potential political. But it came hs a shock to hear that Robin Hood was a fictitious person, and that Dick Whittington was never oor. Dick and his cat, the pealing of the bells—bow poignantly these details touched our youthful minds! His rise from such humble beginnings was a guarantee that nothing would deter us in the sterner years when life was hard. Sir Walter Raleigh, too, seems to have traded on our sympathies, because the story about his putting down his cloak before Queen Elizabeth was untrue. That hurt. Whenever we refused to chop the wood for mother in the past she always referred to Sir Walter, and now we find that wo were fooled after all. One could quote them indefinitely—these disenchantments, which are a part of the world’s tradition, and help to make life vivid and gallant. What are the writers in the ‘ Boy’s Own Annual ’ going to do, now wo know that the Sargossa Sea,( that glamorous haunt of the octopuses, treasure, and fair women, does not exist? Two expeditions failed to find it. And what about the novelists who always mention Lucretia Borgia when they wish to denote a particularly bad woman? She was fx-ee from blame, Mr Ackerman tells us; she was universally respected for her charity, piety, and justice. As for the minor disappointments, wo will quote a few just to show what a nasty, precise fellow this Ackerman is. Dr Guillotine, who, we all thought, perished by his invention, undoubtedly survived the revolution; it was not Napoleon who described the British as “ a nation of shopkeepers,” because the phrase appeared in a book of Adam Smith’s when Napoleon was seven years old. William Tell did not shoot an apple off his son’s head. Years ago the Schuyz Canton, in Switzerland, had the legend expunged from the school books as unauthentic. -DROWNING FALDAHTES. -Vi.HAi'S stj.i they come- : Catgut : is ob-k tuiued from sheep, not cats. A caul won’t protect your baby from drowning in later years ; and .the experience of the vast majority of nearly drowned people shows that they did not rise to the surface three times before losing consciousness. Nor were there-witnesses afforded a panoramic glimpse of their lives before they sank. Chiefly, they seem to have been too busy swallowing water to have had time for anything else. As for King Arthur, he was not flesh and blood at all. What a wealth of romance perishes with this revelation ! Are we to believe there never was an age of chivalry, that all ages were as drab and as uncouth as our own?

You cannot describe the exposing of the truth in regard to Lady Godiva as a minor disappointment. There was a richness in the episode that made it dear to our hearts, a lesson in humility, and sacrifice for an imperfect. world. One feels angry with Tennyson for misleading us. Far from being a tyrant, her husband was loved throughout his country for his benevolence. Exasperated, one reflects that the modern practice of whitewashing black sheep can become an odious thing. Even Nero is rescued froifi calumny. It transpires that he was not fiddling while Rome was burning, but was at Antium, a good many miles away, engaged in a non-incendiary occupation. In his comprehensive review of error, Mr Ackerman takes in every human activity. The pitiful ignorance of our geographical and physical knowledge is revealed. Beef tea is not nutritious, and ,the hearing of death adders is not more defective than that of other snakes. All female spiders do not eat their males; crocodiles don’t weep, and snakes are not fond of music. It was not an asp that caused Cleopatra’s death. Bats, though nocturnal in their habits, are not blind; and please don’t pick up your rabbit by the back of the neck. It hurts. The adage “ Feed a cold and starve a fever ” is a vulgar error, and probably is a corruption of the sentence “ Stuff a cold, and you will have to starve a fever.” Out of pity one stops here, impelled by a belief that the average reader can stand no more. Thank heaven, you exclaim, the memory of some of our national idols is beyond the touch of sacrilegious hands. At least they cannot tell us that Lord Nelson had not one eye, but two. Mr Ackerman has not the audacity to go this far, but he does declare that the famous line, “ Kiss mo, Hardy,” was never uttered. After this, one runs for cover.