A Practical Guide to Conquering the World (The Siege, #3)

by K.J. Parker

Take me, for instance.” “The Great King.” “Exactly. The strongest man on earth. When I’m not tearing down city gates with my bare hands, I’m strangling lions. And that’s true. It’s true because people believe it.” “I suppose it depends on your definition of—” He shook his head. “No,” he said. “The truth’s the truth, that’s it’s defining quality. Either a thing’s true or it isn’t. But tell me this. If I don’t believe in a thing and everybody else in whole wide world does, what then?” He smiled. “A thing is true because we believe it. If we stop believing, it stops being true.” “We stop believing because new evidence comes along.” “You think that? How sweet. No, really it’s all about fashion, like hairdos and hemlines and tassels on cushions. We believe something because people we think are really cool tell us it’s true. Then we shape the evidence to fit, like a blacksmith bending iron. Or we just believe, because the truth is so self-evident it needs no proof, and no proof can shake our belief.” He stopped and caught his breath again. “Listen to me, nattering on. But you’re not a subject of the empire, so you don’t have to listen to me. Lucky you. The long and the short of it is, the fact that a miracle was really all camels doesn’t stop it being a miracle. From time to time, God uses tools and instruments. He makes use of you, just as you make use of camels. It was a pleasure to meet you,” he said. “I’d best be getting back now.

Once again truth. What we belive is truth. We fit evidence to it.