probably to
themselves, which simply means, in our modern accuracy of language, that
they will feel young. This island has never been found. Many voyages have
been made in search of it in ships and in the imagination, and Liars have
said they have landed on it and drunk of the water, but they never could
guide any one else thither. In the credulous centuries when these voyages
were made, other islands were discovered, and a continent much more
important than Bimini; but these discoveries were a disappointment,
because they were not what the adventurers wanted. They did not
understand that they had found a new land in which the world should renew
its youth and begin a new career. In time the quest was given up, and men
regarded it as one of the delusions which came to an end in the sixteenth
century. In our day no one has tried to reach Bimini except Heine. Our
scientific period has a proper contempt for all such superstitions. We
now know that the 'Fons Juventutis' is in every man, and that if actually
juvenility cannot be renewed, the advance of age can be arrested and the
waste of tissues be prevented, and an uncalculated length of earthly
existence be secured, by the injection of some sort of fluid into the
system. The right fluid has not yet been discovered by science, but
millions of people thought that it had the other day, and now confidently
expect it. This credulity has a scientific basis, and has no relation to
the old absurd belief in Bimini. We thank goodness that we do not live in
a credulous age.

The world would be in a poor case indeed if it had not always before it
some ideal or millennial condition, some panacea, some transmutation of
base metals into gold, some philosopher's stone, some fountain of youth,
some process of turning charcoal into diamonds, some scheme for
eliminating evil. But it is worth mentioning that in the historical
evolution we have always got better things than we sought or imagined,
developments on a much grander scale. History is strewn with the wreck of
popular delusions, but always in place of them have come realizations
more astonishing than the wildest fancies of the dreamers. Florida was a
disappointment as a Bimini, so were the land of the Ohio, the land of the
Mississippi, the Dorado of the Pacific coast. But as the illusions,
pushed always westward, vanished in the light of common day, lo! a
continent gradually emerged, with millions of people animated by
conquering ambi