220 NATURE AND MAN. 



have happened exactly as it is described, this very M. Boutigny 

 being named by Houdin as his companion and exemplar ; and 

 looking to the reason assigned by Houdin for inquiring into the 

 subject — viz. his desire to account for the wonders he had himself 

 witnessed in the performances of the Arab conjurors, whom he 

 was sent by the French Government to outdo (these men walking 

 with bare feet upon red-hot bars of iron, and licking red-hot 

 plates with their tongues) — he sees no reason for discrediting 

 Houdin's statement that it really did happen. 



To the well-informed physicist, the internal evidence of con- 

 formity to a general principle is here so satisfactory, that he needs 

 but a very small weight of external testimony to justify his belief 

 in the particular fact narrated. But to any one who comes freshly 

 to the subject, the affirmation seems to rest on external testimony 

 alone ; while the negation afforded by the inherent improbability 

 of the statement is to the mind so decisive, that he deems himself 

 fully justified in repudiating it altogether. Supposing, however, 

 that a scientific friend points out to him that he has no title to set 

 up a judgment which has no other basis than his own ordinary 

 common sense, against that of men who have given special atten- 

 tion to this department of inquiry, and who agree in asserting, 

 not only that the fact is true, but that it admits of a satisfactory 

 explanation ; he then, if not over-confident in his own judgment, 

 withdraws the negation, and accepts the affirmative, in deference 

 to the authority by which it is supported ; still, however, without 

 feeling that assurance which constitutes "conviction." But, 

 further, if he can then be induced to go, step by step, through 

 the whole series of experimental researches which lead up to this 

 wonderful climax, he comes to feel the full force of that internal 

 evidence, which not only removes all difficulty in the acceptance 

 of the asserted fact, but shows that it has an inherent probability 

 of its own, as a particular case of a well-established general 

 principle. And yet I suspect that, however strong his mental 

 conviction as to the safety of the act, there is not one of us who 

 would venture to hold his hand in a stream of molten iron, until 

 he had previously seen another person do so with impunity. 



Another illustration, in a very different line of inquiry, may 

 be drawn from the recent case of Louise Lateau, a Belgian 



