Of all the five recording faculties which we human creatures share with other animals, the sense of Smell is the most elusive, the most penetrating. It apprises us of impending peril when all our other wires of sensation are “busy” or “out of order” and incapable of giving us warning. It has the mysterious power of reproducing through the “flash back” we call memory the forgotten records of all of the other four sense-films, and yet the scientists who can tell us all about light waves and sound waves, and even make pictures of them, have very little to say about the movement of the invisible bodies whose impact upon our consciousness produces the sensation of smell. The terrific scent-energy hurled forth from the seemingly inexhaustible storage battery of an Onion or a Tuberose is more of a mystery to our men of science than is the composition of the crooked light waves from the planet Mars or the height of the flames of the Corona, measured in a solar eclipse. Even Dr. Einstein, to whom the movements of the heavenly bodies are as simple as is a game of baseball to the average intellect, cannot tell us whether the scent-atoms hurled from the Onion rush forth in an impeccable tangent or are pitched in a hyperbolic curve. [1] _Herod._: 11, 125. [Illustration] WALTZING MICE AND DANCING MEN “On some men the Gods bestow Fortitude, On others a disposition for Dancing.” Thus the poet Hesiod, three thousand years ago, scored with vitriolic antithesis the Dancing man of his day⸺ And of all the days, for like the poor (and no less deplorable) the Dancing man is always with us. The gods had much to answer for in the days of Hesiod, and man had much to put up with. Anything, good or evil, that befell him, from the measles to melancholia—from fortitude to dancing—was a gift of the gods, wished on him as a token of their high esteem, or otherwise. All man had to do was to accept the gift, and, if it chanced to be boils, as in the case of Job, he might be thankful it was nothing worse. Today we view a gift of the gods with distrust. Before giving thanks we inspect it in the light of Science. We examine it (as a gift horse) in the mouth. If it is a good gift, such as patience, or an aptitude for cooking, we nurture and encourage it; if it is an undesirable gift, like the measles, we eradicate it, or give it to someone else as quickly as possible. Without knowing it, Hesiod uttered a scientific truth. That Fortitude and a Disposition to Dance are gifts of the gods is just as true physiologically as it is poetically speaking. The Dancing man dances, the man of Fortitude faces a cannon—or a musical comedy—because he is built that way. In other words, his behavior is due to certain pathological structural conditions which are inherited.