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Well, what does it really matter? Hamlet is Hamlet whether it was written by the shadowy figure known as Shakespeare or by Sir Francis Bacon or even by one of those lesser claimants like the Earl of Oxford. For that matter, we know hardly anything at all about the creator of The Odyssey, whether he was a man or a woman, one poet or many. Still, any printed work is a reproduction, one of many. And though even a reproduction of a great painting can have a powerful effect, there is something magical about the uniqueness of the original, the knowledge that Rembrandt applied his brush just here, nowhere else, and never again. Or somebody did. So we wander into that philosophical bramble patch at the edge of the legendary forest where the legendary tree falls and nobody is there to hear whether it makes a sound. Is the famous Etruscan warrior whom the Metropolitan Museum declared a fake some years ago any less handsome than he was back when we thought he was a real Etruscan? Yes, though it is hard to say why, just that he gives us less pleasure than he once did. Even with a genuine work, when it is stripped of its authorship, its identity is damaged, the richness of its context weakened. Could even the Sistine Chapel remain the same in our eyes if we were suddenly informed that there had never been a Michelangelo clinging to the ceiling to paint it? That it was actually the work of some Renaissance craftsman whose name and circumstances were unfortunately unknown?
The Man with the Golden Helmet is as great as it ever was, not the least bit fake. But to be described in the future as a work by "Anon" or perhaps "School of Rembrandt" is to be changed forever. And the change somehow diminishes the picture and therefore diminishes us. This continuous search for truth can be a painful and punishing process. Sometimes it seems that all of education consists of first learning things and then learning that they are not true.
When we were very young, we learned that George Washington had confessed to chopping down a cherry tree because he couldn't tell a lie; we were still young when we learned that Parson Weems had propagated this little tale in an effort to edify the youth of the new nation, that the chocolate hatchets sold in candy stores on Feb. 22 were all part of the commercial exploitation of legend.
Indeed, the whole course of American history can be interpreted as a series of legends abandoned. Not only did Paul Revere never say "One if by land, two if by sea," and all that, but he never even got to Concord to warn the Minutemen of the oncoming British. Nathan Hale probably never said on the gallows, "I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." Jefferson preached that all men are equal, but he kept slaves, and so did Washington. And Betsy Ross never sewed that first American flag either.
On it goes. Many of the commonsensical scientific facts that were learned in school a generation ago had to be subsequently unlearned. The most healthy diet was once considered to be red meat every day and lots of eggs and milk too. The auto would run for a year on a uranium pill. Babies (the more the better) must be fed on a strict schedule every three hours; no, babies must be fed whenever they cry; no, on a schedule . . . And the sun never sets on the British empire.