THE " EVIL EYE."
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In your issue (just received) of December 22nd, 1888, the writer of the article on "The Evil Eye" refers to the un- willingness of Bengal women to hear their children praised by strangers, as something separate and peculiar to Bengal, and hitherto unexplained, "though the converse feeling, that it is unlucky to boast of a child, is common enough." But is it necessary to regard this latter feeling as "the converse" of the other ? Is it not rather an a fortiori deduction from the other Are they not practically identical, and is not the fear of "a jealous God," which, as your article implies, is the source of the dread of personal boasting, also the source of the dread. of a stranger's praise ? Are not personal boasting and a stranger's praise alike affronts, though in different degrees, to. " them above" P Both feelings show a certain instinct for justice, a sense that in a world lying under a curse, the recipient of any marked good fortune should in mere fairness receive by way of compensation some marked calamity : the only difference is, that to shrink from boasting is a later and more moral expression of this same instinct for justice, inasmuch as the boaster who glorifies himself on the score of ex- ceptional success granted him by external powers, sins against justice in a double degree—he sins in his circumstances, and he also sins deliberately and personally with his lips—while, on the other hand, the Bengal mother shows the same feeling in its simpler and more primitive form. The mere fact of con- spicuous good fortune—even without the aggravation of wilful boasting—is in her eyes an offence to jealous gods ; and how will the attention of such gods to such success be attracted more surely than by a stranger's praise P A mere kinsman's might be discounted by a stretch of indulgence, but a stranger's ! When lEmilius Paullns rejoiced at his son's death, because it meant to his mind that the Nemesis of his successful campaign was now spent, it was not a Nemesis of any boasting that he feared. He had clearly shunned all boasting with scrupulous care. (Plutarch, " Life of Paullus .2Erailius," chap. xxxvi.) So, again, when Herodotus says that the Magnesian farmer, the finder of the Persian treasures washed ashore after the storm, was not always lucky, " for calamity plagued this man also : he became the slayer of his children" (Herodotus, vii., 190), he does not hint even that the man suffered for boasting,—he suffered for his good luck ; that was all his offence, and that was enough.—I am, Sir, &c., MAURICE HUTTON.
University College, Toronto, January 7th.
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