CHAPTER I. A RECKONING WITH TIME

“Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too
superstitious.”

To say that superstition is one of the facts of history is only to
state a truism. If that were all, we might treat the subject from
a purely philosophical or historical point of view, as one of the
inexplicable phenomena of an age much lower in intelligence than our
own, and there leave it.

But if, also, we must admit superstition to be a present, a living,
fact, influencing, if not controlling, the everyday acts of men, we
have to deal with a problem as yet unsolved, if not insolvable.

I know it is commonly said that such things belong to a past age--that
they were the legitimate product of ignorance, and have died out with
the education of the masses. In other words, we know more than our
ancestors did about the phenomena of nature, and therefore by no means
accept, as they did--good, superstitious souls!--the appearance of a
comet blazing in the heavens, or the heaving of an earthquake under our
feet, as events having moral significance. With the aid of electricity
or steam we perform miracles every day of our lives, such as, no doubt,
would have created equal wonder and fear for the general stability of
the world not many generations ago.

Very true. So far as merely physical phenomena are concerned, most of
us may have schooled ourselves to disunite them wholly from coming
events; but as regards those things which spring from the inward
consciousness of the man himself, his intuitions, his perceptions,
his aspirations, his imaginative nature, which, if strong enough, is
capable of creating and peopling a realm wholly outside of the little
world he lives in--“ay, there’s the rub.” Who will undertake to span
the gulf stretching out a shoreless void between the revelations of
science and the incomprehensible mysteries of life itself? It is upon
that debatable ground that superstition finds its strongest foothold,
and, like the ivy clinging round old walls, defies every attempt to
uproot it. As Hamlet so cogently puts it,--

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Superstition, we know, is much older than recorded history, and we now
stand on the threshold of the twentieth century; yet just in proportion
as humanity has passed over this enormous space of time, hand in hand
with progress, superstition has followed it like its shadow. That
shadow has not yet passed away.

There is no sort of use in denying the proneness of weak human nature
to admit superstition. It is an open door, through which the marvellous
finds easy access. Imbibed in the cradle, it is not even buried in the
grave. “Age cannot stale, nor custom wither” those ancient fables of
ghosts, giants, goblins, and brownies told by fond mothers to children
to-day, just as they were told by mothers centuries ago. Even the
innocent looking Easter egg, which continues to enjoy such unbounded
popularity with old and young, comes of an old Aryan myth; while the
hanging up of one’s stocking, at Christmas, is neither more nor less
than an act of superstition, originating in another myth; or, in plain
English, no Santa Claus, no stocking.

How much of childhood’s charm in the greatest of all annual festivals,
the world over, would remain if Santa Claus, Kris Kringle, and St.
Nicholas were stripped of their traditional, but wholly fictitious,
character? One of our popular magazines for children--long life to
it!--flourishes under the title of St. Nicholas to-day; and during the
very latest observance of the time-honored festival, a leading journal
in New England’s chief city devoted considerable space in its editorial
columns to an elaborate defence of that dear old myth Santa Claus,
with whom, indeed, we should be very loth to part, if only for the sake
of old associations.

It is also noticed that quite recently stories of the wonderful
brownies have enjoyed their greatest popularity. For a time these
spindle-shanked, goggle-eyed puppets could be seen in every household,
in picture-books, on book covers, in the newspapers--in short,
everywhere. Should the children be told that there never were any
such creatures as fairies or brownies, there would be an end to all
the charm they possess; for, unquestionably, their only hold upon
the popular mind rests upon the association with olden superstition.
Otherwise they would be only so many commonplace rag dolls.

Kipling’s popular “Jungle Stories,” probably more widely read than any
stories of the century, give still further effect to the same idea.

Now, is not the plea that these are mere harmless nothings by far the
most short-sighted one that could be advanced? The critical thought
to be impressed here is that about the first teaching little children
receive is a lesson in superstition, and that, too, at a time when
their young minds are most susceptible to lasting impressions. We have
yet to hear of the mother, nursery-maid, or governess, who begins the
story of Cinderella or Bluebeard with the warning that it is not “a
real true story,” as children say.

Are children of a larger growth any less receptive to the marvellous?
“Great oaks from little acorns grow.” The seed first planted in virgin
soil later bears an abundant harvest. Stage plays, operas, poetry,
romances, painting, and sculpture dealing with the supernatural
command quite as great a popularity, to-day, as ever. Fortune telling,
palmistry, astrology, clairvoyance, hypnotism, and the rest, continue
to thrive either as a means of getting a living, or of innocent
diversion, leaving their mark upon the inner consciousness just the
same in one case as in the other.

So much being undeniable, it stands with every honest inquirer after
truth to look these facts in the face without blinking. Ignorance we
dare not plead. The dictates of a sound common sense will not permit us
to dismiss what we do not understand with a laugh, a shrug, or a sneer.
“To scold is not to answer.”

Superstition is not easily defined. To say that it is a disposition to
believe more than is warranted by reason, leaves us just as helpless
as ever; for where reason is impotent we have nothing tangible left to
fall back upon. There is absolutely no support on which to rest that
lever. Religion and philosophy, which at first fostered superstition,
long ago turned against it all the forces they possessed. Not even
science may hope to overthrow what can only be reached through the
inner consciousness of man, because science can have little to do with
the spiritual side of man. That intangible something still eludes
its grasp. If all these combined forces of civilization have so far
signally failed to eradicate superstition, so much the worse for
civilization.

We might also refer to the efforts of some very erudite scholars to
interpret modern superstition by the aid of comparative mythology.
Vastly interesting, if not wholly convincing, theories have been
constructed on this line. Instructive, too, is the fact that some
of our most familiar nursery stories may be traced to the ancient
folk-lore of still older peoples. Even a remote antiquity is claimed
for the familiar nursery tale of “Jack and Jill”; while something very
similar to the story of “Little Red Riding Hood” is found, in its
purity, in the grewsome werewolf folk-lore of Germany; and “Jonah’s
Gourd,” of the East, we are told, probably is the original of “Jack and
the Beanstalk” of the West.

But the very fact of the survival of all these hoary superstitions,
some of them going back so far that all further trace is lost,
certainly furnishes food for thought, since they seemingly enjoy as
great a popularity as ever.

Superstition being thus shown to be as old as human history, the
question naturally arises, not how it may have originated in the Dark
Ages, but how it has kept its hold so tenaciously throughout all the
succeeding centuries down to our own time.

Most peoples, barbarians even, believed in some sort of a future state,
in the principle of good and evil, and of rewards and punishments.
There needs no argument then to account for the insatiable longing to
pry into futurity, and to discover its hidden mysteries. The same idea
unsettled the minds of former generations, nor can it be truthfully
said to have disappeared before the vaunted wisdom of this utilitarian
age. Like all forbidden fruit, this may be said to be the subject of
greatest anxiety to weak human kind.

What then is this talisman with the aid of which we strive to penetrate
the secrets of the world beyond us?

Man being what he is, only “a little lower than the angels,” endowed
with the supernatural power of calling up at will mental images of both
the living and the dead, of building air-castles, and peopling them
according to his fantasy, as well in Cathay as in Spain, of standing
by the side of an absent friend on the summit of Mont Blanc, one moment
among the snows, the next flitting through the garden spots of sunny
Italy--if he is thus capable of transporting himself into an enchanted
land by the mere exercise of the power of his imagination--what could
better serve him as a medium of communication with the unknown, and
what shall deter him from seeking to fathom its deepest mysteries?
Napoleon said truly that the imagination governs the universe. Every
one has painted his own picture of heaven and hell as well as Dante
or Milton, or the divine mysteries as truly as Leonardo or Murillo.
Surely, the imagination could go no further.

Assuming this to be true, there is little need to ask why, in this
enlightened age, the attempt should be made to revive vagaries already
decrepit, that would much better be allowed to go out with the departed
century, unhonored and unsung. Such a question could proceed only from
a want of knowledge of the true facts in the case.

But whether superstition is justified by the dictates of a sound common
sense, is not so material here, as whether it actually does exist;
and if so, to what extent. That is what we shall try to make clear in
the succeeding pages. The inquiry grows interesting in many ways, but
most of all, we think, as showing the slow stages by which the human
mind has enfranchised itself from a species of slavery, without its
counterpart in any direction to which we may turn for help or guidance.
Even science, that great leveller of popular error, limps here.
Certainly, what has existed as long as human history must be accepted
as a more or less active force in human affairs. We are not, therefore,
dealing with futilities.

Of the present status of superstition, the most that can be truthfully
said is that some of its worst forms are nearly or quite extinct,
some are apparently on the wane, while those representing, perhaps,
the widest extremes (the most puerile and the most vital), such, for
example, as relate to vapid tea-table gossip on the one hand, and to
fatal presentiments on the other, continue quite as active as ever.
Uncivilized beings are now supposed to be the only ones who still hold
to the belief in witchcraft, although within a very few months it has
been currently reported as a fact that the judge of a certain Colorado
court admitted the plea of witchcraft to be set up, because, as this
learned judge shrewdly argued, more than half the people there believed
in it. The defendant, who stood charged with committing a murderous
assault upon a woman, swore that she had bewitched him, and was
acquitted by the jury, mainly upon his own testimony.

Unquestionably modern hypnotism comes very close to solving the problem
of olden witchcraft, which so baffled the wisdom, as it tormented the
souls and bodies, of our ancestors, with this difference: that, while
witchcraft was believed to be a power to work evil, coming direct from
his Satanic Majesty himself, hypnotism is a power or gift residing in
the individual, like that of mesmerism.

But if it be true that there are very few believers in witchcraft among
enlightened beings to-day, it cannot be denied that thousands of highly
civilized men and women as firmly believe in some indefinable relation
between man and the spirit world as in their own existence; while
tens of thousands believe in such a relation between mind and mind.
Indeed, the former class counts some very notable persons among its
converts. For example, Camille Flammarion, the distinguished scientist,
positively declares that he has had direct communication with hundreds
of departed spirits. And the Reverend M. J. Savage, pastor of the
Church of the Messiah, in New York, is reported to have announced
himself a convert to spiritualism to his congregation not long ago.

The true explanation for all these different beliefs must be sought
for, we think, deep down in the nature of man, which is much the same
to-day in its relation to the supernatural world as it was in the days
of our fathers of bigoted memory. In reality, the supernatural element
exists to a greater or less degree in all of us, and no merely human
agency can pretend to fix its limits.

Unquestionably, then, those beliefs which have exerted so potent an
influence in the past over the minds or affairs of men, which continue
to exert such influence to-day, and, for ought we know to the contrary,
may extend that influence indefinitely, are not to be whistled down
the wind, or kept hidden away under lock and key, especially when we
reflect that the most terrible examples of the frailty of all human
judgments concerning these beliefs have utterly failed to remove the
groundwork upon which they rest.

There still remains the sentimental side of superstition to consider.
What, for example, would become of much of our best literature, if
all those apt and beautiful figures culled from the rich stores of
ancient mythology--the very flowers of history, so to speak--were
to be weeded out of it with unsparing hand? What would Greek and
Roman history be with their gods and goddesses left out? With what
loving and appreciative art our greatest poets have gathered up the
scattered legends of the fading past. Some one has cunningly said that
superstition is the poetry of life, and that of all men poets should be
superstitious.

As a matter of history, it is well known that our Puritan ancestors
came over here filled full of the prevalent superstitions of the
old country; yet even they had waged uncompromising warfare against
all such ceremonious observances as could be traced back to heathen
mythology. Thus, although they cut down May-poles, they had too much
reverence for the Bible to refuse to believe in witches. Writers like
Mr. Hawthorne have supposed that the wild and extravagant mysteries of
their savage neighbors, may, to some extent, have become incorporated
with their own beliefs. However that may be, it is certain that the
Puritan fathers believed in no end of pregnant omens, also in ghosts,
apparitions, and witches, as well as in a personal devil, with whom,
indeed, later on, they had no end of trouble. In short, if anything
happened out of the common, the devil was in it. So say many to-day.

A certain amount of odium has attached itself to the Puritan fathers of
New England, on this account, among unreflecting or ill-natured critics
at least, just as if, upon leaving Old England, those people would
be expected to leave their superstitions behind them, like so much
useless luggage. As a matter of fact, rank superstition was the common
inheritance of all peoples of that day and generation, whether Jew or
Gentile, Frenchman or Dutchman, Virginian or New Englander. Of its wide
prevalence in Old England we find ample proof ready to our hand. For
example:

“At Boston, in Lincolnshire, Mr. Cotton being their former minister,
when he was gone the bishop desired to have organs set up in the
church, but the parish was unwilling to yield; but, however, the bishop
prevailed to be at the cost to set them up. But they being newly up
(not playing very often with them) a violent storm came in at one
window and blew the organs to another window, and brake both organs and
window down, and to this day the window is out of reputation, being
boarded and not glazed.”

Still further to show the feeling prevailing in England toward
superstition at the time of the settlement of this country, in the
historical essay entitled “With the King at Oxford,” we find this
anecdote: The King (Charles I.), coming into the Bodleian Library on
a certain day, was shown a very curious copy of Virgil. Lord Falkland
persuaded his Majesty to make trial of his fortune by thrusting a knife
between the leaves, then opening the book at the place in which the
knife was inserted. The king there read as follows:--

“Yet let him vexed bee with arms and warres of people wilde,
And hunted out from place to place, an outlaw still exylde:
Let him go beg for helpe, and from his childe dissevered bee,
And death and slaughter vile of all his kindred let him see.”

The narrative goes on to say that the king’s majesty was “much
discomposed” by this uncanny incident, and that Lord Falkland, in order
to turn the king’s thoughts away from brooding over it, proposed making
the trial himself.

We continue to draw irrefragable testimony to the truth of our
position from the highest personages in the realm. Again, according to
Wallington, Archbishop Laud, arch persecutor of the Puritans, has this
passage in his diary: “That on such or such a day of the month he was
made archbishop of Canterbury, and on that day, which was a great day
of honor to him, his coach and horses sunk as they came over the ferry
at Lambeth, in the ferry-boat, and he prayed that this might be no ill
omen.”

Our pious ancestors put a good deal of faith in so-called “judgments,”
or direct manifestations of the divine wrath toward evildoers, as all
readers of Mather’s “Remarkable Providences” well know. But they were
by no means alone in such beliefs. It is related of the poet Milton,
after he became blind, that the Duke of York (later James II.) asked
him if he did not consider the loss of his eyesight as a judgment
inflicted upon him for what he had written of the late king. In reply
Milton asked the duke, if such afflictions were to be regarded as
judgments from heaven, in what manner he would account for the fate of
the late king; ... he, the speaker, had only lost his eye, while the
king had lost his head.”

John Josselyn, Gent., an Englishman, but no Puritan, who spent some
time in New England, chiefly at Scarborough in Maine, published, in
1672, in England, a little book under the title of “New England’s
Rarities Discovered.” Some things which Josselyn “discovered” would be
rarities indeed to this generation. For instance, he describes the
appearance of several prodigious apparitions--all of which has a value
in enabling us properly to gauge the tone and temper of popular feeling
where the book was written, and where it was published. One of his
“rarities” is worth repeating here, if only for the pretty sentiment
it embodies. He says of the twittering chimney-swallows, “that when
about to migrate they commonly throw down (the chimney) one of their
young into the room below, by way of gratitude,” presumably in return
for the hospitalities of the house. He then goes on to say, “I have
more than once observed that, against the ruin of a family, these birds
will forsake the house and come no more.” This comes from a more or
less close observer, who himself occupied the relation we desire to
establish, namely that of a transplanted Englishman, so thoroughly
grounded in old superstition that all the marvels he relates are told
with an air of truth quite refreshing.

An amusing instance of how far prevalent superstition can lead astray
minds usually enlightened is soberly set forth in Governor Winthrop’s
celebrated history. It is a fit corollary to the organ superstition,
just narrated.

“Mr. Winthrop the younger, one of the magistrates, having many books
in a chamber, where there was corn of divers sorts, had among them
one wherein the Greek Testament, the Psalter and the Common Prayer
were bound together. He found the Common Prayer eaten with mice, every
leaf of it, and not any of the two other touched, nor any other of his
books, though there were above a thousand.”

All these superstitious beliefs were solemnly bequeathed by the fathers
to their children under the sanction of a severe penal code, together
with all the accumulated traditions of their own immediate ancestors.
And in some form or other, whether masquerading under some thin
disguise or foolish notion, superstition has continued from that day to
this. As Polonius says:

“... ’Tis true, ’tis pity;
And pity ’tis ’tis true.”

Although a great many popular beliefs may seem puerile in the extreme,
they none the less go to establish the fact to be kept in mind. Since I
began to look into the matter I have been most astonished at the number
of very intelligent persons who take care to conform to prevailing
beliefs in things lucky or the reverse. It is true Lord Bacon tells
us that “in all superstitions wise men follow fools.” But this blunt
declaration of his has undoubted reference to the schoolmen, and to the
monastic legends which were such powerful aids in fostering the growth
of superstition as it existed long before Bacon’s time:--

“A bone from a saintly anchorite’s cave,
A vial of earth from a martyrs grave.”

The class of persons just spoken of, is, however, so keenly sensitive
to ridicule that only some chance remark betrays their real mental
attitude.

With the unlettered it is different. Superstition is so much more
prevalent among them that less effort is made at concealment. Perhaps
the many agencies at work to put it down have not had so fair a trial
in the country as in the city. And yet the recent “Lucky-Box” craze
makes it difficult to draw the line. Be that as it may, it would hardly
be an exaggeration to say that some rural communities in New England
are simply honeycombed with it. Indeed, almost every insignificant
happening is a sign of something or other.

One result of my own observation in this field of research is, that
women, if not by nature more superstitious than men, hold to these
old beliefs much more tenaciously than men. In the country, it is the
woman who is ready to quarrel with you, if, in some unguarded moment,
you should venture to doubt the potency of her manifold signs. In the
city, it is still the woman who presents her husband with some charm or
other to be worn on his watch-chain, as a safeguard against disease,
inconstancy, late hours, or other uncounted happenings of life,
believing, as she does, more or less implicitly, in its traditional
efficacy. In all that relates to marriage, too, women are usually most
careful how they disregard any of the accepted dicta on a subject of so
much concern to their future happiness, as will appear later on.

Fifty years ago the poet Whittier declared that “There is scarcely
a superstition of the past three centuries which has not, at this
very time, more or less hold upon individual minds among us.” The
broad declaration demands less qualification to-day than is generally
supposed.

Most of the examples collected in this volume have come under my
own observation; some have been contributed by friends, many by the
newspapers. If their number should prove a surprise to anybody, I can
only say that mine has fully equalled their own. But let us, at least,
be honest about it. We can conceal nothing from ourselves. Silence may
be golden, but it makes no converts.