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.