THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF. 219 



ing trick, like the "inexhaustible bottle," the "aerial suspension," 

 or the " second sight," mentioned in his previous pages. For he 

 would scarcely be more able to conceive of a man literally and 

 actually immersing his hands in molten iron, without any special 

 preparation, and withdrawing them unharmed, than he could 

 suppose an unlimited quantity of several different liquids to be 

 poured out of a single bottle. 



Another reader, however, finds no inherent improbability in 

 the narration ; for he knows that a special study had been made 

 by M. Boutigny of that "spheroidal state" of bodies, of which we 

 have a familiar example in the rolling and jumping of drops of 

 water upon a red-hot iron plate ; and that between this phe- 

 nomenon (which is in itself sufficiently wonderful, when we come 

 to think of it) and the harmless immersion of the hand in molten 

 iron, M. Boutigny had worked out a continuous series of experi- 

 mental marvels, all of them referable to the same simple and 

 intelligible principle, — viz. the interposition of a film of vapour 

 between the heated plate and the water thrown upon it, or between 

 the molten iron and the hand immersed in it,* which prevents 

 absolute contact between the two. Our second reader might 

 himself, perhaps, have been present at the meeting of the British 

 Association in 1845, at which M. Boutigny gave an account of 

 these investigations, and publicly exhibited the freezing of 7vater 

 in a red-hot platinum crucible (an experiment which Faraday 

 afterwards " capped " by freezing tnerairy in a like vessel) ; and 

 at which, also, one of the workmen at Messrs. Ransome and 

 May's foundry, in the presence of a large number of competent 

 witnesses, did exactly what Houdin describes. Or, if he was not 

 himself present, he knows that M. Boutigny's experiments were 

 fully accepted as genuine at the time by the whole scientific 

 world ; that they have never in any way been called in question ; 

 and that the doctrine founded upon them is now universally recog- 

 nized as an established principle in physics. Thus lie has been 

 prepared by his previous training for the ready acceptance of 

 Houdin's narration ; he feels assured that the occurrence might 



* If the hand be naturally moist, there is no need of any preparation what- 

 ever ; if it be diy, the hand should be previously dipped in water and wiped 

 on a towel. 



