CURIOSITIES OF SUPERSTITION. 757 



for a day or two, in order to keep all their available wits about them. 

 A Silesian miner will make his will if his lamp happens to go out be- 

 fore its oil is spent. According to the analysis of Immanuel Kant, the 

 basis of the whole delusion is what he calls the post hoc ergo propter hoc 

 fallacy " after it, therefore because of it," or the tendency to mistake 

 an accidental coincidence for the result of a causal connection. From 

 this point of view there is no specific difference between a misapplica- 

 tion of the inductive method and the grossest portent-superstition. 

 The precipitate follower of Bacon has noticed the coincidence of cold 

 weather and catarrhs, and jumps to the conclusion that a low tempera- 

 ture deranges the functions of the respiratory organs ; he has known 

 cases of recovery following the use of Dr. Quack's cough-medicine, 

 and ascribes the cure to the nostrum. The weather changes about 

 four times a month, a month has four lunar phases, therefore the 

 weather depends on the changes of the moon. At the roulette-table 

 certain numbers may now and then turn up oftener than others : the 

 gambler concludes that they must be lucky numbers, or bets on red 

 cards because he twice lost his monthly salary on a black one. To 

 the objection that the weather-superstition deals, after all, with fixed 

 natural laws, and the roulette-superstition with capricious accidents, 

 the gambler might reply that so-called accidents are only necessities 

 in disguise. 



When that disguise is practically impenetrable, the theoretical at- 

 tempts to that effect speak, perhaps, in favor of an order-loving and 

 systematic tendency of the human mind. Man is a methodical animal, 

 and will regulate his conduct by the most fantastic rules rather than 

 act entirely at hap-hazard. " In the game of life," says Edmond 

 About, " men are often apt to follow a system where they might just 

 as well play at random." 



In some cases that tendency may be ascribed to a latent fetichism. 

 In the age of faith every man had his favorite days, months, numbers } 

 stars, colors, etc. ; for all such things had their presiding deities, and 

 their partisans, as it were, threw themselves upon the protection of 

 a tutelary spirit. The hero of the " Cyropsedia " never gives battle 

 without sacrificing to the genius of the day and the nymphs of the sur- 

 rounding rivers and mountains. Scipio Africanus used to invoke the 

 deities of a hostile city before he brought his battering-rams into play, 

 just as the Zooloo Caffres propitiate the demons of a new hunting- 

 ground. It seemed the safer way " If it does no good it can do no 

 harm " as the mediaeval apologists justified the invocation of the pa- 

 tron saints, and in the same way a gambler may defend his "system" 

 against the objections of his intellectual conscience. 



The rules of such systems often suggest the influence of curious 

 associations of ideas. In ancient Greece the luckiness of the first 

 lunar phase was deemed so axiomatic that the Spartans missed the 

 battle of Marathon rather than take the field before the new moon. 



