Webster's Unabridged, and you will discover that the artist who set out to illustrate the word mandrake for that somewhat venerable authority was by no means able to free himself from the ancient spell. Credulity is evermore a factor in the compound called human nature. Men love to be fooled, or to find some support for belief in manifest absurdity. There is nothing so silly but has its advocates among men who ought to know better,
A year or two since, a man brought from Ohio to the University of Iowa an innocent five-parted, digitate, black fungus. It was treasured in alcohol. Why? Because of its origin. An honest mechanic meeting with accident lost his fingers under the surgeon's knife. The amputated members were neglected, but presently discovered and duly buried in the garden. The following spring from the "identical spot" uprose a swarthy hand, black without, white within. The hand was a perfect main-de-gloire for that sensation-loving community. The matter was discussed in newspapers. A long and careful account of the wonder was prepared, put in print and circulated among the friends of the deceased—fingers! "What fools we mortals be!" For sheer superstition and crass stupidity who may say that the nineteenth century may not yet discount the days of the virgin Queen?
But I said at the outset that Shakespeare had in some instances anticipated modern scientific teaching. To illustrate this in its most striking instance, I am compelled to offer a somewhat long quotation (Winter's Tale, iv, 4, 76-106):
"Polixenes. Shepherdess,
A fair one are you, well you fit our ages
With flowers of winter.
Perdita.Sir, the year growing ancient,
Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth
Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o' the season
Are our carnation and streaked gillyvors.
Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind
Our rustic garden's barren; and I care not
To get slips of them.
Polixenes. Wherefore, gentle maiden.
Do you neglect them?
Perdita. For I have heard it said
There is an art which in their piedness shares
With great creating nature.
Polixenes. Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean: so, over that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock,
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
