SEEING THINGS

Taupo Times, Volume I, Issue 28, 23 July 1952, Page 4

SEEING THINGS

WE notice in the news from | overseas the reported reappearance of "flying saucers" in America. Stories have been pouring in for the past two weeks to the Air Intelligence Centre at Dayton, Ohio. The "flying saucer" ranks with the sea serpent and the Lock Ness Monster as a topic for endless argument. There are lots of people who claim to have seen with their own eyes at least one of these three, and there are, contrarywise, others who deride their assertions as figments of the imagination — in plain language, "bunk." It would go a long way towards solving these mysteries if someone could persuade a sea serpent to swallow a bait with a good strong hook and line, haul it aboard, and send it to a museum; if the Loch Ness Monster, instead of bobbing up suddenly and disappearing immediately were to chase a fishing party up and down and make a grab at their boat; if someone .could discover in a field a flying saucer that had spent its energy and dropped to the ground. As it is we have to rely on somebody's say-so.

All this is not to say that there is no such thing as a sea serpent, a Loch Ness Monster, or a flying saucer. The simple fact is that the concrete evidence upon which certainty could be established beyond dcubt is facking. But the scient'fic | enquirer nevertheless keeps an cpen mind, making as his motto, the homely phrase "You never can tell." Shakespeare reminds that there are more things in heaven and earth and under the sea than are dreamt cf in y*v ph'losophy. He never said a truer word. i Imagination, however, is a curious t-h'ng. People often see things that are not there, and can even persuade others to sh°re their imaginatLn. Thus by progressive degrees, a whole community becomes oi sessed by an

epidemic of mass hysteria. Years ago somebody started a story of mysterious lights in the New Zea)and sky. Reports began to come in from various parts of the country that others had seen them, and a Wellington newspaper (now defunct), actually published drawings. That was a clear case of mass hysteria. People in wartime see in a clump of drifting seaweed the sinister shape cf an enemy submarine. And so it goes on. The flying saucer may be in the sarae category. What the scientific investigators would like to have are a few bits and pieces of one of them. Untii that happens they can only conclpde that people have been "seeing things."