75 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



not confined to the Latin races, but prevails in Persia and China, as 

 well as among the South-China Malays and their East Indian neigh- 

 bors. In Southern Italy the superstition is almost universal. Accord- 

 ing to the popular theory, the possessor of an evil-eye can stare his 

 victims into all sorts of afflictions, palsy, rickets, goitre, etc. Nay, his 

 power for evil has hardly any limits whatever, for by the same optical 

 process he can produce death and epidemics cholera infantum, for 

 instance. And, moreover, such persons are generally conscious of their 

 dreadful talent, and can forbear its exercise, for they manage to con- 

 nive at their favorites. Evil-eye wizards can be known by their pe- 

 culiar way of squinting, or by their bushy eyebrows, that conceal the 

 piercing steadiness of their gaze, and orthodox crones lament the de- 

 cadence of the good old times when such offenders could be brought 

 to justice. According to the myth of the Puranas, the god Siva can 

 blight a whole town with his withering look ; and the Indian gods, 

 who often visit earth in the guise of mortals, are sometimes recognized 

 by the rigidness of their gaze : they never wink ; to their sleepless eyes 

 space and time are units. Hecate and Medusa had such optics, and 

 the basis of the superstition may possibly be the primitive man's 

 dread of mental superiority, the power of mind over matter, ascribed 

 to the eye, as the mirror of the soul. Captain Burton noticed that 

 the negroes of Soodan are almost unable to meet a white man's gaze, 

 though they quail still more before the fire-eyes of their Semitic neigh- 

 bors. The Veddahs of Ceylon, too, seem, to dread a Siva in every 

 foreigner. 



But the most wide-spread of all superstitions is the belief in por- 

 tents. In some of its modifications the tendency to ascribe an ominous 

 significance to certain events, and good or bad luck to be auspices 

 of certain times or contingencies, is all but universal. It survives 

 the influence of every other form of superstition. The elder Pliny, 

 who calmly rejects the entire mythological system of his country- 

 men, admits his belief in the prognostications of the haruspices. The 

 skeptic, Wallenstein, kept two or three professional astrologers. Na- 

 poleon the Great was a firm believer in lucky and unlucky days. The 

 Pyrrhonist, Walid, surrounded himself with Egyptian pages on account 

 of the " favorable auspices of their nationality. The Marquis d'Argens, 

 the presiding atheist of the Sans-Souci symposia, after shocking even 

 the scoffing king and the king of scoffers by the profanity of his re- 

 marks, was apt to turn pale at the discovery of a double peach-stone 

 or the accidental spilling of the salt. French mariners have ceased 

 to vow wax-candles to Our Lady of Brest, but they still dislike 

 to leave a harbor on Friday, or during the progress of a hail-shower. 

 The agnostic Chinamen (for the gospel of Confucius is nothing but a 

 secular code of morals) postpone a journey if they meet a decrepit old 

 woman. Certain dreams impress them so strongly with the dread of 

 impending disaster that even opium-smokers will forego their drug 



