784 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



them even numbers were connected with earthly things, partaking 

 of the feminine principle of Yang. Odd numbers were looked upon 

 as proceeding out of the divine and endued with the masculine prin- 

 ciple. Thirty was called the number of earth, because it was made 

 up by the addition of the even numbers 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. On the 

 other hand, 25, the sum of the five odd numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9, was 

 called the number of heaven. 



It is generally true that, as lower peoples developed the need of 

 numbers and the power to use them, certain of these numbers came 

 to be surrounded with a superstitious importance and endued with 

 certain qualities which led at once to numerical preferences more or 

 less dominant in all their thinking connected with numbers. 



It would certainly be unjustifiable to conclude from the evidence 

 at hand that the preferences shown in the guesses under consideration 

 are directly traceable to some such superstition; and yet one can 

 scarcely prevent himself from linking them vaguely together. 

 Especially is this true when some consideration is given to a probable 

 connecting link as shown in our modern superstitious notions. I 

 have found through a recent study of these superstitions that where 

 numbers are introduced, the odd are used to the almost complete ex- 

 clusion of the even. For example, I have collected and tabulated 

 a series of more than sixty different superstitions using odd numbers, 

 and have found but four making use of the even. Besides these spe- 

 cific examples there are many more which in some form or another 

 express the belief that odd numbers have some vital relation with 

 luck both good and bad. 



It would be impossible to define precisely or even approximately 

 just what sort of a mental state the word " luck " stands for, but one 

 element in its composition is a more or less naive belief in super- 

 natural and occult influences which at one time work for and at 

 another time against the believer. In its more pronounced forms, 

 the belief in luck lifts itself into a sort of a blind dependence upon 

 some ministering spirit which interposes between rational causes and 

 their effects. In a way one may say that the more or less vague and 

 shadowy notions of luck which float in the minds of people to-day are 

 but the emaciated and famishing forms of a once all-embracing super- 

 stition, and that these shadows possess a potency over life and action 

 oftentimes beyond our willingness to believe. 



There is another interesting and somewhat curious thing to be 

 noticed in connection with these guesses. There is a persistent tend- 

 ency to the duplication of digits, or, if one thinks of the numbers as 

 at first conceived in terms of language, a tendency to alliteration. 

 For example, the numbers 111, 222, 333, 444, 555, 666, 777, 888, 

 and 999 occur oftener by sixty-seven per cent than any other com- 



