P. T. Barnum was the great early American merchandiser of exciting secular fantasies and half-truths. His extremely successful precircus career derived from and fed a fundamental Fantasyland mindset: If some imaginary proposition is exciting, and nobody can prove it’s untrue, then it’s my right as an American to believe it’s true. Barnum’s response to his naturalist was a perfect perversion of Enlightenment empiricism and logic: Disbelieving in mermaids isn’t proof that this creature isn’t a mermaid. The exhibits and performances at his American Museum freely mixed and confused the authentic
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