"THE WILL TO BELIEVE"

Ancient pagans found the human body so interesting and puzzling that they made of it an object of worship; modern pagans like Walt Whitman claim that such an attitude is most natural. At all events, however carefully scientists have recorded facts about the body, when someone claims for it a new and more wonderful function, all known facts are brushed aside in the mad rush of unreasoning worship.

Dr. Johnson laid the "Cock Lane ghost" by showing that some one who had learned the dangerous minimum of fact was playing upon the credulity of the public. So completely did the Salem witches take in the hardheaded Puritans, that they were placed in the fire to drive out the evil spirits. Mary Ellen of Nova Scotia kept sophisticated newspaper readers undecided between belief and scorn. And more recently a nurse caused gray bearded doctors to shake their puzzled heads at her steadily maintained temperature of 114 degrees until the hoax was discovered in the form of a hot water bottle.

Even now there are many who may be won over at once by the claim of a French scientist that he had discovered in the human body a "paroptic" sense, or one making sight possible through the pores of the skin. In proof of this the doctor had his subject blindfolded with heavy cloth for ordinary light lays, and with leadfoil for X-rays. The subject then "read", printed cards held a short distance from his nose.

In this case the tendency to believe will be particularly strong, because the facts are given such a scientific flavor and because it is claimed that the new sense will eliminate blindness. Since we are anxious to give credence, we can a least promise in a "suspension of disbelief" while awaiting the verdict of investigation. And it can be suggested that, even if the scientist should be excused as a quack, he may at least have the prospect of making a living in another way. For a certain boy, on whom a pig's eye was grafted recently, although unable to see clearly has entered a career on the vaudeville stage, and, with the pig as his co-partner, is "doing nicely".