E. Nesbit on Proof

by Mar 20, 2014Books

Screen Shot 2014-03-20 at 9.29.47 AMSearching for public domain books to read to my small son, I ran across E. Nesbit’s Five Children and It. I remembered that Lewis expressed some appreciation for Nesbit, and I was delighted to hear in her some of the same wit and keen observation of children’s ways that I love in Lewis. Here’s a great sample:

Grown-up people find it very difficult to believe really wonderful things, unless they have what they call proof. But children will believe almost anything, and grown-ups know this. That is why they tell you that the earth is round like an orange, when you can see perfectly well that it is flat and lumpy; and why they say that the earth goes round the sun, when you can see for yourself any day that the sun gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night like a good sun as it is, and the earth knows its place, and lies as still as a mouse. Yet I daresay you believe all that about the earth and the sun, and if so you will find it quite easy to believe that before Anthea and Cyril and the others had been a week in the country they had found a fairy. At least they called it that, because that was what it called itself; and of course it knew best, but it was not at all like any fairy you ever saw or heard of or read about.

Can’t resist a good epistemology quote, even and especially if it comes from a children’s book from 1902.

Read More 

Review: The Power Broker, by Robert Caro

Review: The Power Broker, by Robert Caro

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro My rating: 5 of 5 stars Robert Caro is fascinated by power. He has given his life to exploring how it is gained and kept. And in Robert Moses, the subject of this epic book, power looks like the...

Review: Finding the Right Hills to Die On by Gavin Ortlund

Review: Finding the Right Hills to Die On by Gavin Ortlund

Finding the Right Hills to Die On: The Case for Theological Triage by Gavin Ortlund My rating: 4 of 5 stars Gracious, clear, accessible. Extremely well done. I nearly docked him a star for being ever-so-slightly in a different place than I am on creationism (though I...

Review of a New Book: Allen Guelzo on Robert E. Lee

Review of a New Book: Allen Guelzo on Robert E. Lee

Robert E. Lee: A Life, by Allen C. Guelzo.Complicating current efforts to remove any monuments honoring Robert E. Lee, there was a genuine nobility in the man that everyone—his friends, foreign journalists, even his Northern abolitionist opponents—often recognized....

Leave a comment.

0 Comments