The
scene of the pursuit of Hector would be ridiculous on the stage--the
Greeks halting instead of pursuing him, and Achilles shaking his head
to stop them; but in the poem the absurdity is overlooked. The
marvellous, however, is a cause of pleasure, as is shown by the fact
that we all tell a story with additions, in the belief that we are
doing our hearers a pleasure.
Homer more than any other has taught the rest of us the art of framing
lies in the right way. I mean the use of paralogism. Whenever, if A is
or happens, a consequent, B, is or happens, men's notion is that, if
the B is, the A also is--but that is a false conclusion. Accordingly,
if A is untrue, but there is something else, B, that on the assumption
of its truth follows as its consequent, the right thing then is to add
on the B. Just because we know the truth of the consequent, we are in
our own minds led on to the erroneous inference of the truth of the
antecedent. Here is an instance, from the Bath-story in the _Odyssey_.
A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing
possibility. The story should never be made up of improbable
incidents; there should be nothing of the sort in it.
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