Lucretius...on discovering truth



...no fact is so simple that it is not harder to believe than to doubt at the first presentation. Equally, there is nothing so mighty or so marvellous that the wonder it evokes does not tend to diminish in time. Take the first pure and undimmed lustre of the sky and all that it enshrines: the stars that roam across its surface, the moon and the surpassing splendor of the sunlight. If all these sights were now displayed to mortal view for the first time by a swift and unforeseen revelation, what miracle could be recounted greater than this? What would men before the revelation have been less prone to conceive as possible? Nothing, surely. So marvellous would have been that sight - a sight which no one now , you will admit, thinks worthy of an upward glance into the luminous regions of the sky. So has satiety blunted the appetitie of our eyes. Desist, therefore, from thrusting out reasoning from your mind because of its disconcerting novelty. Weigh it, rather, with discerning judgement. Then, if it seems to you true, give in. If it is false, gird yourself to oppose it.

-Lucretius, 1st Century B.C.