lady.” Then followed an explicit account of the twelve years of imposture and an impudent expression of thanks to the clergy for the unwitting aid in his deviltries; a forced retreat to a neighboring cafe to escape the vengeance of the crowd; a momentary furore, some discussion pro and con; and then, so far as can be learned, the world wagged on and the story ends.[1] Surely this is a remarkable instance of fin-de-siècle credulity, and one that will hardly suffer by comparison with mediaeval superstition. Its importance in the present connection lies in the illustration which it furnishes of what may happen in extreme cases when verifiability and scientific-mindedness are wholly ignored, and the methods that appeal to authority and to prepossessions are allowed to run riot. Then standards of probability, as well as the critical attitude, are wholly absent or hopelessly distorted, and credulity has the open door.
Prepossessions are not always so prominent in the evolution of myths that gain acceptance by preying upon credulity. The presence of an indolent atmosphere and of a sympathetic milieu is all that is necessary. Of this the story of Kaspar Hauser, the “wild boy of Nuremberg,” furnishes a fairly modern instance; for the Nestors of our generation may easily remember the interest which his case aroused thruout Europe. The commonly accepted tale made him out as an abandoned child, cruelly confined in a dark cell, cut off from all association except with the monster who gave him his daily bread. He became the classic example of the condition of a human being in the absence of all education; he was heralded as a child of nature, as an example of the innocence of man before the fall, as a realization in the flesh of Rousseau’s Émile. It was proposed to adopt him as the child of Europe, and he was actually adopted as a son by the Earl of Stanhope. The interest in his case was maintained by the accounts of his marvelous psychic powers, as also by the speculations as to his origin, which brought slander upon many a noble house. He could see a gnat in a spider’s web a long distance off, and after twilight; he could distinguish between a pear and an apple and
- ↑ The account of Taxil is derived from E. P. Evans, “Survival of mediaeval credulity,” Popular science monthly, March and April, 1900.
