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.

The behavior of the man of Fortitude is due to the poverty of cerebral tissue in that part of the brain whose function it is to stimulate the activity known as imagination. That is to say, he faces the cannon without the least concern, because he can not imagine what it will be like to have a cannon explode right in his face.

What then are the pathological conditions in the brain of the Dancing man that cause him to dance? Unfortunately for the cause of Science, the brain of the true Dancing man is almost as rare a commodity as Radium. In the United States alone there is scarcely more than a fraction of an ounce of this elusive gray tissue. To procure even the minute quantity necessary for experimental purposes would require the sacrifice of thousands of Dancing men. This in these days of Antivivisection Hysteria, is out of the question.

Luckily for Science, there exists in the animal Kingdom another creature afflicted with the same peculiar tendency to perpetual rotation as the Dancing man.

It is but one alliterative step from the Dancing man to the Dancing mouse.

The restlessness and almost incessant movement in circles and the peculiar excitability of the Dancing mouse is attributed by Rawitz, the famous physiologist, to the lack of certain senses which compels the animal to strive through varied movements to use to the greatest advantage those senses which it does possess.

Comparative physiologists have discovered that the ability of animals to regulate the position of the body with respect to external objects is dependent in a large measure upon the groups of sense organs which collectively are called the ear.

To quote Rawitz again:

The waltzing mouse has only one normal canal and that is the anterior vertical. The horizontal and posterior vertical canals are crippled and frequently they are grown together.

Panse, on the other hand, expresses his belief that there are unusual structural conditions in the brain, perhaps in the cerebellum, to which are due the dance movements.

When the doctors disagree what are we going to do about it?

For my part I am willing to leave it to Cicero—

“Nemo fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit.”