ABSTRACT
The tendency to exaggeration seems inborn in the human mind. The calmest and least romantic natures are not altogether free from it. To report a fact is almost inevitably to magnify it. The nursery-tales, crowded with big men and big doings, which are the delight of the modern child, are old-time romances upon which the imagination of the full-grown man was wont to nourish itself in the world’s childhood. The old popular notion that primitive man was of gigantic proportions, and that the human race has gradually deteriorated in stature through the ages gets no support from anthropology. The love of the marvellous not only creates the myth, but provides a public for it. In the story before us the consequences are disastrous. And so the fictitious giants overcome the living proclaimed of the truth. A little calmness, a little courage, would prick this bubble.
