This entourage and the habit of fasting from books
and newspapers were quite enough to make her a facile recipient of
any marvellous story.
I think that in England we are scarcely sufficiently conscious of
the great debt we owe to the wise and watchful press which presides
over the formation of our opinions, and which brings about this
splendid result, namely, that in matters of belief the humblest of
us are lifted up to the level of the most sagacious, so that really
a simple cornet in the Blues is no more likely to entertain a
foolish belief about ghosts or witchcraft, or any other
supernatural topic, than the Lord High Chancellor or the Leader of
the House of Commons. How different is the intellectual regime of
Eastern countries! In Syria and Palestine and Egypt you might as
well dispute the efficacy of grass or grain as of magic. There is
no controversy about the matter. The effect of this, the unanimous
belief of an ignorant people upon the mind of a stranger, is
extremely curious, and well worth noticing. A man coming freshly
from Europe is at first proof against the nonsense with which he is
assailed, but often it happens that after a little while the social
atmosphere in which he lives will begin to infect him, and if he
has been unaccustomed to the cunning of fence by which Reason
prepares the means of guarding herself against fallacy, he will
yield himself at last to the faith of those around him, and this he
will do by sympathy, it would seem, rather than from conviction.
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