ON SUPERSTITION

Evening Star, Issue 19799, 24 February 1928, Page 5

ON SUPERSTITION

“ What a shameful and discreditable thing it is,” says Dean Inge, ” to see an otherwise intelligent person refusing to sit down at dinner as one of thirteen, objecting to bo married in May, or ‘ touching wood’ if he lias said anything unlucky!” And lie proceeds, in his magnificent style of taking tilings for granted, tiiat no otherwise intelligent person ought to take for granted, to speak of the superstitious man as “a man who believes iu u God who will punish him for getting married in May ” J have never yet met a superstitious man who, when an unlucky omen was followed by ill-hick, pint the blame on Heaven (says Robert J.yml, iu the ‘Daily News’). All that the most superstitious man says is that, in Hie course of Nature, certain tilings are followed by certain consequences-—that if yon jump into a river you will get wet, that a. rise in tho barometer in your hall will, for some reason or other, bo followed by good weather (or ought to be), that a mackerel sky is the precursor ul a stormy day, and that, il you spill Lite salt and do not throw a pinch of it over your left shoulder, sonlethiug that you do not like will probably happen to you. I am myself not more than usually superstitious, bin I am superstitious enough to know what superstition means. And i certainly never believe that the unlucky omen is the cause ot the bad luck that follows it. It is at most the announcement that it is coming. Omens have no more to do with producing what follows them than weathercocks and barometers with producing changes in the wind and weather.

There are, i confess, certain superstitious that I. dislike ns heartily as Dean Inge. 1 dislike prying into the future with the aid of a pack of cards. .1 dislike all superstitions that imply that, when a had omen appears, there is no means of averting the threatened consequences. I prefer to read a had omen as a warning of a perfectly preventable calamity, like one of those early symptoms that enable ns to ward off a serious illness. Those who cannot take this optimistic view ot superstitions ought not to be allowed to have superstitions. I have seen people living miserably for seven long years as the result of breaking a looking glass, when all they bad to do was to mend their ways and live virtuously, and nothing whatever would have happened to them. Superstitions, indeed, should bo carried lightly. They should be a play of the fancy, and a gloomy fatalistic creed. Does Dean Inge realise the enormous amount of happiness that is caused every month by seeing tho new moon not through glass? Has he ever thought of the millions of men and women whose hearts have leaped up at the sight of pins lying on the ground? Has he ever considered whether the world would be the richer or the poorer if the superstitious belief in the Christmas stocking were abolished? If we judge superstition by its results, we shall be forced to admit that tho superstitious people who know arc just as happy and just as intelligent as the nnsuperstitfous and (when we remember the use of mascots during the war by airmen) just as brave. As to whether there is anything in superstitions, 1 do not know. All 1 know is that only twice in my life have I sat down to table as one of thirteen, and that on each occasion, when I looked round, I discovered that there was nothing to drink but lemonade. Dean Inge might regard this as a mere coincidence. It may be, but it is a very remarkable coincidence. I shall always feel a little nervous of sitting down to table as one of thirteen lest the same thing should happen again.