In comparison with the crimes of Columbus
his follies cut a sorry figure. Yet the fool-hardy
enterprise to whose failure he owes his
fame is entitled to distinction. With sense
enough to understand the earth's spheroid
form (he thought it pear-shaped) but without
knowledge of its size, he believed that he could
reach India by sailing westward and died in
the delusion that he had done so — a trifling
miscalculation — a matter of eight or ten thousands
of miles. If this continent had not happened
to lie right across his way he and his
merry men would all have gone fishing, with
themselves for bait and the devil a hook
among them. Firmness is persistence in the
right; obstinacy is persistence in the wrong.
With the light that he had, Columbus was
so wildly, dismally and fantastically wrong
that his refusal to turn back was nothing
less than pig-headed unreason, and his
crews would have been abundantly justified
in deposing him. The wisdom of an act is
not to be determined by the outcome, but
by the performer's reasonable expectation of
success. And after all, the expedition failed
lamentably. It accomplished no part of
its purpose, but by a happy chance it accomplished
something better — for us. As to the
Page:Bierce - Collected Works - Volume 09.djvu/75
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OF AMBROSE BIERCE
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