As I was journeying through that country, I met an old man who told me of his home in a distant province. In that land, they believe that certain diseases are dangerous ideas that flow not from one mind to another, but through the blood. And just as in our own country we conspire to tell children stories so that when they are adults they will be able to recognize the signs of a widespread conspiracy, so too in that province they spread a harmless amount of diseased blood into their children to protect them against the full disease. But he says that a certain part of the population has caught a disease of the mind which causes them to be frightened of this process, and so leave their children vulnerable. I suggested to him that the young children could be taught about the spread of disease in schools, so that they would be able to withstand the spread of the fear when it was carried to them as adults, an idea which had never occurred to him.
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