SURVIVAL OF SUPERSTITION

Shannon News, 6 July 1926, Page 4

SURVIVAL OF SUPERSTITION

LUCK AND MASCOTS PURILE ABSURDITIES We live in a seentific age, when every action is supposed to be dictated by reason, yet we find ourselves surrounded by people who confess to the most ridiculous and inadequate motives for many of their activities (writes George E.. Winter, in the Johannesberg 'Sunday Times'). Take, for example, the inveterate backer of racehorses, and listen to his explanation as to the reason he put his money on a particular horse. Sometimes he may make out a good case and give logical chapter and verse for his fancy, but frequently you will find he has succumbed to some entirely irrational suggestion.

It may be that the jockey's colors! include his "lucky" color, or the number of the horse is his lucky number, or he dreamt of a particular word that bore some resemblance to the name of a particular horse. Everyone is familiar with the fantastic reasons that are sometimes behind a particular choice, and thes lender foundation of logic on which many of these "fancies" are based.

Similarly, the gambler with cards or at the roulette table will indulge in ..and be swayed by, superstitions notions that are entirely outside the province of reason. When the emotions are greatly stirred reason generally takes a back seat. During the Great ,War the air was thick with alleged phophecies dug up from recondite sources that promised final victory to the allied arms. No tale was too steep to find supporters, provided l its general trend coincided with the hopes and desires of the listeners.

We find, too, a tendency—not by any means confined to the lowest social stratum—to place confidence in mascots and "lucky" objects of one kind or other. Certain actions are taboo because they are unlucky. Certain days, such as Friday, and certain numbers, such as thirteen, are especially unpropitious. One must not walk under a ladder, of spill the salt, or break a mirror. I have known people so obsessed by these absurd superstitions that almost every action caused embarrassment for fear it should prove unlucky.

Then there are people with so little faith in the universe that they imag- j ine a bogey of some kind awaits them t at every street corner. They will not admit they are well in health for fear I a listening demon will be incensed and , immediately smite them with a fell j disease. "Oh, I musn't boast," they will say. We find, in fact, that despite our professed rationalism and belief in an ordered system of cause

And effect we are incessantly "touch- I ing wood" to keep off the evil chance. : , All this seems very mysterious at first glance until we realise that the rationalistic system of science has not really gained a very secure hold on the minds of the great masses. Running parallel with the belief in an ordered universe and the uniformity of nature, from which such fantasies as "luck" are excluded, is another and much older system of thought which recognises customs and practices that are described as "magical." Anthropologists during the last fifty years have studied closely these cusi toms and the beliefs underlying them, I' and it has become evident that they ] represent a survival of an earlier and pre-scientific attitude to nature. The survival of such an attitude of mind is a psychological phenomenon of the utmost interest, and worthy of more attention than has been bestowed upon it. The characteristic of this early form of thought was a characteristic that is only too prevalent at the'present day It consists in interpreting external nature in terms of the thinker's own personality. Because he (the thinker) was a variable being, blown hither and thither by the force of circumstances, so the forces of Nature were variable and might change from day to day.

Because he was liable to caprice, so Nature, too, was capricious, and, because he was susceptible to flattery, so the high forces that produced the torado or the thunderstorm could be placated by prayers and sacrifices.. An impersonal force acting according to fixed laws and without variation was something beyond the conception of primitive man. Every natural phenomenon was endowed with a personality of its own, and deemed to possess the weaknesses and vacillation of the only personality he knew —namely, the thinker's own.

Animistic thought thus peopled Nature with a vast' concourse of gods and demi-gods, demons and ghosts. A man had to keep a strict guard on puagjo pinous ax[ aoj anSuoj s\w one of the ever-listening entities. On the other hand, a little subtle flattery' by word or deed a sacrifice, the-per-formance of a ritual, might have the! effect of establishing the performer! in the favor of the local deity.

Men must always have believed in; cause and effect, and they must have recognised a certain amount of invariability between some causes and some effects. Man could, not. have been a hunter without realising this. Nevertheless, the personality with which the higher causes were endowed and the resulting caprices of which they were capable, destroyed any feeling of certainty that the same effect would invariably follow were

the same set of circumstances accurately repeated. Thus, though certain modern savages recognise the principal of antecedent and consequent, or cause and effect, between the hunter's weapon and the death of his prey, yet it is also deemed necessary to anoint the weapon- with certain magical preparations in order to avoid disaster, and they are never without circumstantial tales of how misfoTtune ensued when these ceremonies had been omitted. * Moreover, in tracing the connection of cause and effect, primitive man was content with going less than half the distance travelled by the man of science to-day. Hypotheses wejre formed too easily from fancied resemblances between the supposed cause and the supposed effect, and these hyotheses were not submitted to verification.

"A savage resting in a cave on a windy night," says Professor Myers "hears howling outside. Nothing is to be sen to account for the noise; but it, whatever it is, howls like a wolf; or rather (he thinks)it is not an ordinary wolf, but if a wolf were big and fierce enough it would howl like that." So he invents a myth; the "Wind Wolf," which goes down | to posterity as a real creature. So far as he had reasoned on the

resemblance between the wolf and this superwolf which howls with the force of the storm, his myth resembles a scientific hypothesis; but he fails to verify his hypothesis. *"With such a howling,' 'says Professor ers, "common prudence argues irresistibly, against experimental vertification; and it is at this point oP omission to test the hypothesis that myhology has its frontier with science, a myth being an unverified hypothesis of what is happening." Another logical error into which the savage falls—an error that is shared by the modern superstitious

person—is arguing from the particular to the general. Because a misfortune happened to the savage who set out hunting without first anointing his weapon, it follows that misfortune always will occur if the ceremony is omitted. The savage doesi not pause to consider if unanointed weapons have been occasionally successful; a single instance is sufficient on which to erect a general truth. Similarly, people have been lucky or unlucky when they were wearing a> particular color or performed an action in a particular way; henceforth the color is adopted on all oc-. casions of banned for ever. Instances' when the color has not brought good (or bad) luck are obstinately ignored.; You will be told by such people, I! know that such or such a thing Is

unlucky, because on a certain occasion etc. etc. A single instanceis good* enough to prove that bad

luck is universally associated with the particular thing in any and every circumstance. We thus see that the votary of modern superstition is exhibiting a mentality on a level with that of primitive man in the twilight states of the human intellect. It may no*, be possible to reason securely about everything. There are some things that are beyond reason, though not opposed to it. But in heaven's name, if Ave select a particular phenomenon as a possible cause for another phenomenon, let us select an adequate caus e and not fatuous and puerile absurdities, which are a reproach to plain common-sense.