because the greatest masters of numbers,
the Newtons and Leibnitzes, rank among the greatest men. But there are
fashions in numbers too. The Middle Ages took a fancy to some familiar
number like seven; and because it was an odd number, and the world was
made in seven days, and there are seven stars in Charles's Wain, and for
a dozen other reasons, they were ready to believe anything that had a
seven or a seven times seven in it. Seven deadly sins, seven swords
of sorrow in the heart of the Virgin, seven champions of Christendom,
seemed obvious and reasonable things to believe in simply because they
were seven. To us, on the contrary, the number seven is the stamp of
superstition. We will believe in nothing less than millions. A medieval
doctor gained his patient's confidence by telling him that his vitals
were being devoured by seven worms. Such a diagnosis would ruin a modern
physician. The modern physician tells his patient that he is ill because
every drop of his blood is swarming with a million microbes; and the
patient believes him abjectly and instantly. Had a bishop told William
the Conqueror that the sun was seventy-seven miles distant from the
earth, William would have believed him not only out of respect for the
Church, but because he would have felt that seventy-seven miles was
the proper distance. The Kaiser, knowing just as little about it as
the Conqueror, would send that bishop to an asylum. Yet he (I presume)
unhesitatingly accepts the estimate of ninety-two and nine-tenths
millions of miles, or whatever the latest big figure may be.

CREDIBILITY AND TRUTH.

And here I must remind you that our credulity is not to be measured by
the truth of the things we believe. When men believed that the earth was
flat, they were not credulous: they were using their common sense, and,
if asked to prove that the earth was flat, would have said simply, "Look
at it." Those who refuse to believe that it is round are exercising
a wholesome scepticism. The modern man who believes that the earth
is round is grossly credulous. Flat Earth men drive him to fury by
confuting him with the greatest ease when he tries to argue about it.
Confront him with a theory that the earth is cylindrical, or annular,
or hour-glass shaped, and he is lost. The thing he believes may be
true, but that is not why he believes it: he believes it because in
some mysterious way it appeals to his imagination. If you ask him why
he believes that th