America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat [76]
my readers will not be surprised at my saying that the performance of a conjuror should not be encouraged. What pleasure can there be in being tricked? It may be a great display of dexterity to turn water into wine, to seem to cut off a person's head, to appear to swallow swords, to escape from locked handcuffs, and to perform the various cabinet tricks, but cleverness does not alter the fact that after all it is only deception cunningly contrived and performed in such a way as to evade discovery. It appears right to many because it is called "legerdemain" and "conjuring" but in reality it is exactly the same thing as that by which the successful card-sharper strips his victims, viz., such quickness of hand that the eye is deceived. Should we encourage such artful devices? History tells many stories as to the way in which people have been kept in superstitious bondage by illusions and magic, and if it be now held to be right to deceive for fun how can it be held to have been wrong to deceive for religion? Those who made the people believe through practising deception doubtless believed the trick to be less harmful than unbelief. I contend, therefore, that people who go to see conjuring performances derive no good from them, but that, on the contrary, they are apt to be impressed with the idea that to practise deception is to show praiseworthy skill. It is strange how many people pay money to others to deceive them. More than ever before, people to-day actually enjoy being cheated. If the tricks were clumsily devised and easily detected there would be no attraction, but the cleverer and more puzzling the trick the more eagerly people flock to see it.
Christian preachers and moralists could do well to take up this matter and discourage people from frequenting the exhibitions of tricksters. There are doubtless many laws in nature yet undiscovered, and a few persons undoubtedly possess abnormal powers. This makes the cultivation of the love of trickery the more dangerous. It prevents the truth from being perceived. It enables charlatans to find dupes, and causes the real magician to be applauded as a legerdemainist. This is what the New Testament tells us happened in the case of Jesus Christ. His miracles failed to convince because the people had for a long time loved those who could deceive them cleverly.* The people said to him, "Thou hast a devil," and others warned them after his death saying, "That deceiver said while he was yet alive `After three days I will rise again.'" When people are taught not only to marvel at the marvelous but to be indifferent to its falsehoods they lose the power of discrimination, and are apt to take the true for the false, the real for the unreal.
-- * This is a rather unorthodox view, but nonetheless interesting, especially as it pertains to his following statements. -- A. R. L., 1996. --
For an evening's healthy enjoyment I believe a circus is as good a place as can be found anywhere. The air there is not close and vitiated as in a theater; you can spend two or three hours comfortably without inhaling noxious atmospheres. It is interesting to note that the circus is perhaps the only form of ancient entertainment which has retained something of its pristine simplicity. To-day, as in the old Roman circuses, tiers of seats run round the course, which in the larger circuses is still in the form of an ellipse, with its vertical axis, where the horses and performers enter, cut away. But the modern world has nothing in this connection to compare with the Circus Maximus of Rome, which, according to Pliny, held a quarter of a million spectators. It is singular, however, that while the old Roman circuses were held in permanent buildings, modern circuses are mostly travelling exhibitions in temporary erections. In some respects the entertainment offered has degenerated with the change, for we have to-day nothing in the circus to correspond to the thrilling chariot races in which the old Romans delighted. I wonder that in these days of restless search for novelties some one does
Christian preachers and moralists could do well to take up this matter and discourage people from frequenting the exhibitions of tricksters. There are doubtless many laws in nature yet undiscovered, and a few persons undoubtedly possess abnormal powers. This makes the cultivation of the love of trickery the more dangerous. It prevents the truth from being perceived. It enables charlatans to find dupes, and causes the real magician to be applauded as a legerdemainist. This is what the New Testament tells us happened in the case of Jesus Christ. His miracles failed to convince because the people had for a long time loved those who could deceive them cleverly.* The people said to him, "Thou hast a devil," and others warned them after his death saying, "That deceiver said while he was yet alive `After three days I will rise again.'" When people are taught not only to marvel at the marvelous but to be indifferent to its falsehoods they lose the power of discrimination, and are apt to take the true for the false, the real for the unreal.
-- * This is a rather unorthodox view, but nonetheless interesting, especially as it pertains to his following statements. -- A. R. L., 1996. --
For an evening's healthy enjoyment I believe a circus is as good a place as can be found anywhere. The air there is not close and vitiated as in a theater; you can spend two or three hours comfortably without inhaling noxious atmospheres. It is interesting to note that the circus is perhaps the only form of ancient entertainment which has retained something of its pristine simplicity. To-day, as in the old Roman circuses, tiers of seats run round the course, which in the larger circuses is still in the form of an ellipse, with its vertical axis, where the horses and performers enter, cut away. But the modern world has nothing in this connection to compare with the Circus Maximus of Rome, which, according to Pliny, held a quarter of a million spectators. It is singular, however, that while the old Roman circuses were held in permanent buildings, modern circuses are mostly travelling exhibitions in temporary erections. In some respects the entertainment offered has degenerated with the change, for we have to-day nothing in the circus to correspond to the thrilling chariot races in which the old Romans delighted. I wonder that in these days of restless search for novelties some one does