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Indeed, there is nothing more plastic than man’s ability to think and believe. At one time or another, in one part of the world or another, man has accepted or believed things wilder than anything contained in philosophic books. His capacity for change is almost unlimited. It is no idle postulate, then, that man’s nature, across the whole world, might change entirely in a span of a few years. (A postulate is a self-determined thought or decision.) One has but to study his history to find such shifts of viewpoint and alterations of character. The inertia of populaces is a myth. For instance, the coming of St. Paul to Rome, almost two thousand years ago, changed the nature of all Roman slaves with a firelike swiftness. The appearance of a monk in England at the beginning of the last millennium altered the insularity of that island in a few months and sent hordes thundering off to the Crusades filled with a piety and zeal which, before his arrival, were markedly absent. And in the last quarter of the twentieth century, the idea of collectivism flooded out from a desperate band of revolutionaries to change the customs and methods of living of nearly a majority of the population of the world.
If man can alter in such numbers, the alteration of an individual would seem to be relatively simple. And so it is. With new knowledge and with many of his past and present problems suddenly resolved, an individual in a few weeks can present a face to his fellows which has markedly changed.
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