THE EVIL OF PETTY SUPERSTITIONS.
WE are a little surprised by the letters and the comments which our expression of a rather contemptuous toler- ance for the superstition about boasting, published a fort- night ago, has brought upon us. We gather from them that a great many cultivated people like their small superstitions. That they should entertain them is natural, for it is hard to shake off nursery lessons, and hard too not to believe what often seems to be the teaching of experience, but why people should prefer to be superstitions we do not understand. They do, however. Some evidently dislike trusting their reason wholly because that way, as they think, Agnosticism may lie; some feel in their superstitious beliefs an antiquarian charm, or relation to their forbears; while others appear to have the feeling that if they cleared the superstitions wholly out, their mental scenery would be rendered bare and marred by sameness,—one reason, at least, why the old and the secluded are often so fond of novels. They do not all put the question, but all we think are inclined to ask us, as one rather clever old lady has done, what harm the petty superstitions can do. Why not throw salt over your shoulder if you spill it ? We have no ante- cedent prejudice against superstitions, indeed we rather welcome anything that proves that the masses have convic- tions not based upon the sordid facts of their lives, but still we deem superstitions (that is, fancies which affect conduct, but for which there is no evidence) to be injurious things, and in a week in which an Irishwoman has been slowly roasted to death because she was, in her relatives' belief, "bewitched," it may be worth while to explain why. So far as they are believed, they are needless and embarrassing fetters upon human action. This fact is rarely felt by the English cultivated, because their superstitions are usually unimpor- tant, it not signifying much whether you pass under a ladder or not, or whether you are for a moment alarmed because you have broken a mirror ; but among a great portion of man- kind, including a section of our own poor, the smaller supersti- tions make up a real and heavy burden. They keep up a per- manent distrust in the goodness of Providence, and a watchful- ness to avoid evils from unknown forces which is most enfeebling. A French or Italian peasant will do nothing which is opposed to certain apophthegms registered in his mind as dogmas, and an Asiatic peasant is bound hand and foot by a whole system of beliefs in omens which cramp his energies as much as ever the Rabbinical views of the Law as to anise and cumin and the like cramped, in the time of our Lord, the energies of the Jews. Mr. Zangwill declares in that wonderful book of his, "The Children of the Ghetto," that his fellow. tribesmen are still bound in these withes, and tells at least one story of pure superstition, that which prevents " Hannah " from marrying her lover, which is heart-breaking in its pathos. There is not an Asiatic in the world who would dare to go dead against the warnings of his horoscope, and very few Europeans of the Continent who will stride forward resolutely on an undertaking the beginning of which has been marked by a stumble or a failure. Even in England this special idea about omens has amazing influence, as has also the other belief in premonition or presentiment, which has its origin, usually at all events, in a self-generated fear assumed to have been implanted from an external source. It may be so implanted, for what we know, sometimes, for it would show a rash incredulity to reject finally the mass of evidence tend- ing in that direction ; but the majority of those who feel presentiments, feel fifty for one which proves even partially true. We all know the annoyances to which the belief in the superstition about thirteen subjects English dinner-givers, while on the Continent it is difficult, land in Paris impossible, to let a house with the number thirteen on the door. Even the iron logic of French functionaries gives way before that belief, and proprietors of Tows are permitted to register the thirteenth house as 12B. We have never ourselves met that particular superstition in England, and have been a little amazed by an assurance that it still lingers among the uncultivated, that it affects the rent -of the " unlucky " number in the poorer quarters, and that the number increases the eagerness of servants to be sure of the character of employers before they are engaged. Every .superstition, in fact, is a hampering fetter, and it is the duty -of all who desire full self.control to shake off such sense- less and enfeebling restrictions upon the freedom of action. We do not say that they should join the Thirteen Club, or walk defiantly under ladders, because both those actions, in recognising the superstitions, give them importance ; but sensible folk should forget them if possible, ignore them in action when they come up accidentally, and, above all, never 'discuss them as possibly founded on truths. They might as well tell ghost-stories in the dark, and expect to be free from ." creepiness."
There is another reason for avoiding superstition which is very sound, though Englishmen, or at least English lands- men, rarely feel it, except in connection with churchyards. Nothing in the world so deteriorates courage. European sailors, who, for some reason, probably the solitude of the sea, are peculiarly liable to superstition, will not move if this side -of their natures is once aroused, and Asiatics, even Chinese, seem to grow demented with fear. An Arab will face any- thing except the idea of an apparition, and all who have known the Zulus declare that these exceptionally brave warriors, -who care nothing about death, will scream with terror and -run like hares if they fancy themselves "bewitched." It is cowardice pure and simple which makes our own poor so callous to the suffering of witches, and the kind of disease which once broke out in Massachusetts, and led to such fright- -ful cruelties against all who were denounced by Cotton Mather and his associates, was nothing but an epidemic of fear. It is as much a duty to resist that as to resist any other impulse to fly instead of struggling, and this the more because every concession increases the hold of the alarming idea. You can break yourself of the fear of the dark, which is a variety of superstition, if you will resolutely disregard it, but 3ield to it after you have become conscious of it, and darkness becomes armed with irresistible terrors. Grant that sitting down at dinner with twelve other persons faintly increases your chance of death in a twelvemonth—which of course it does not do—and still the obligation is to disregard the chance, just as you would disregard a presentiment if it stopped you from fulfilling an imperative duty. We hardly comprehend why this side of the matter is so habitually unnoticed, or why a gamekeeper, who would face a tiger or five poachers with a light heart, is not ashamed of himself when he retreats to his cottage because he has seen a magpie on his left. One would expect him, even if he believed his own queer theory of causation, to damn the mag- pie and go on ; but superstition long indulged kills out within its range all ordinary manliness. We will not venture to Bay that a Prussian regiment would run from a spook if it thought it saw one, for fear of being accused of belittling the German Army, but that it would wish to run and only be held in by discipline we are very sure. That is a permanent and a most demoralising effect of superstition.
The worst effect of superstition is, however, the diminution of confidence in Providence. There is an impression abroad upon this subject, especially, it is said, among Catholic priests on the Continent, which tends not a little to give all Western superstitions their continued vitality. It is that the superstitious mind is potentially the religious mind, and that it is a pity to disturb or impair a tendency which makes for good. We do not believe there is any truth in that theory. The most unscrupulous are often the most super- stitious, while a man of genuine religious feeling can hardly be superstitious at all, at least in the sense in which we are throughout this article using the word. He must have some sense of the protection of God, some idea that even if he is threatened by something against which he is powerless, resignation is required of him. It is very hard, we know, to drive into English beads the idea that resignation is a virtue at all, they all at heart sympathising with Clovis and his expressed notion that if he and his Franks had been present at the Crucifixion, the Roman soldiery would have come to grief ; but still the religious at least among them will not deny that there is such an element in Christ's teaching. Well, it is clearly disobeyed whenever a super- stition which we know to be one is made a ground of action. As we do not admit that the thing we fear, say a warning from bird or beast or accident, comes from God, then clearly the secret appeal in obeying it is to Fate, to a power either above, or at least outside, the divine one. The duty of
a Christian is to deny any such power, and when it appears to an excited fancy to be in movement, to go on disregarding,
with the clear feeling that nothing can happen without divine permission, and that reason can deal only with the reasonable sources of alarm. The rest must be left to be dealt with if they exist at all by a higher will. To see genuine Christians fretting because they are sitting down thirteen at dinner, is to see an absurdity which increases one's perception of the tenuity of the hold which logic has even over the best minds. They would be ashamed to admit that they thought there was something independent of the will of God which bad to be taken into account, yet unless they believe that God imposed that whimsical rule, that is what they must really mean. They had much better refuse to dine at a public dinner where there are fifty guests, because of that number, if we accept the Registrar-General's averages, one is almost certain to die within the year. Yet a decent Alderman, who will dine happily at the Fishmongers with fifty convives, will admit that his dinner was spoilt because at a private entertainment he counted only twelve other guests. Super- stition enfeebles ; that is the whole truth about it, and those
who would rather that it continued to exist are doing their best to keep alive a definite source of unhappiness to mankind.
Previous page
