Tinkerbell seems to have invaded the mindset of modern man. That is to say, too many people think that if you believe something it makes it so, and if you do not believe something that makes it so. How often have you heard people say, “Well, I don’t believe in Hell.” Then they go on living like the devil–imagining that just not believing in Hell makes Hell go away. (Here is a connected post: Do You Believe in Hell?) Likewise a good number of religious people think that just by believing a particular doctrine makes it so.
This is practical relativism.
(source: If You Believe in Fairies…)
This habit of thought is, perhaps, not exclusively modern–but it certainly has a modern pedigree:
HAMLET
Denmark’s a prison.ROSENCRANTZ
Then is the world one.HAMLET
A goodly one; in which there are many confines,
wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ the worst.ROSENCRANTZ
We think not so, my lord.HAMLET
Why, then, ’tis none to you; for there is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me
it is a prison.ROSENCRANTZ
Why then, your ambition makes it one; ’tis too
narrow for your mind.HAMLET
O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count
myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I
have bad dreams.
(source: SCENE II. A room in the castle.)
………………………………..Hail horrours, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less then he
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.
(source: Paradise Lost: Book 1, and see also the Mt. Niphates soliloquy!)
…so it’s odd to have to say that William Blake, in this piece, picked the right thread on this one.