The Odyssey
by Homer
Translated by Alexander Pope
Contents
INTRODUCTION.
Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of scepticism.To be content with what we at present know, is, for the most part, to shut ourears against conviction; since, from the very gradual character of oureducation, we must continually forget, and emancipate ourselves from, knowledgepreviously acquired; we must set aside old notions and embrace fresh ones; and,as we learn, we must be daily unlearning something which it has cost us nosmall labour and anxiety to acquire.
And this difficulty attaches itself more closely to an age in which progresshas gained a strong ascendency over prejudice, and in which persons and thingsare, day by day, finding their real level, in lieu of their conventional value.The same principles which have swept away traditional abuses, and which aremaking rapid havoc among the revenues of sinecurists, and stripping the thin,tawdry veil from attractive superstitions, are working as actively inliterature as in society. The credulity of one writer, or the partiality ofanother, finds as powerful a touchstone and as wholesome a chastisement in thehealthy scepticism of a temperate class of antagonists, as the dreams ofconservatism, or the impostures of pluralist sinecures in the Church. Historyand tradition, whether of ancient or comparatively recent times, are subjectedto very different handling from that which the indulgence or credulity offormer ages could allow. Mere statements are jealously watched, and the mo