ESSAYS 



THE DOCTB.INE OF LUNAR SYMPATHY (Joshua C. Gregory, B.Sc.) 



If the language of " the earhest poets . . . was the language of extra- 

 ordinary occasions," ^ and if primitive superstitions ignore rational causes 

 because of " the prepotency of the unusual, wonderful, mysterious, in attract- 

 ing attention," ^ Democritus may have rightly referred superstitious beliefs 

 in many gods to the impressions made by extraordinary natural phenomena .^ 

 The remark that biology originally centred on oddities * expresses the same 

 belief in the influence of the unusual upon the human mind. The violence 

 of the unusual, its insistence on attention, and the emotion it stirs seem to 

 qualify it for pre-eminency in stirring and fixing belief. But the vigorous 

 appeal of the unusual may be evanescent. During the annular eclipse of 

 1919 the Kassena fled to their huts in terror, but when it was over they 

 laughed at their own fears.^ This evanescence of emotional stir has 

 induced many to disparage the control of the unusual over beliefs. Since 

 life's ordinary round presses continually, it succeeds where the evanescent 

 exception fails, and the usual seems to dominate both human practice and 

 belief. Habits, both of action and belief, are impressed by the continual 

 pressure of the usual. Men are carried along in a stream both by the human 

 society in which they live and by the experiences that surround them from 

 day to day. But the violence of unusual and striking events does, at times, 

 permanently deflect thought. The whole organisation of Lourdes sprang 

 from a vision when little Bernadette Soubirous saw " Our Lady " in the 

 grotto near the wild briar bush.^ Both the usual and the unusual are potent 

 on the mind : the one because it constantly presses, and the other because 

 it can take the soul by storm. Each is weak where the other is strong : the 

 unusual often failing because it does not continue and the usual because 

 it does not arrest. 



The arrestiveness of the exceptional and the steady pressure of the 

 customary are often combined in periodic experiences. Primitive ritual. 

 Miss Harrison remarks, is dominated by the periodic rite which, in its turn, 

 is dominated by the impressive periodic events of nature.' The recurrence 

 of spring, with its impressive burst into plant life, centred ceremonial rites 

 upon itself. The wide periodicity of life and nature has impressed many 

 minds. The Greeks chose to represent the universe as a ceaseless transfor- 

 mation without end or beginning, as a succession of cyclic periods that 



1 Wordsworth, Append. Lyr. Ballads, 1802. 



^ Carveth Read, The Origin of Man and of his Superstitions, p. 122. 



^ ZeUer, Presocratic Philosophy (AUeyne's trans.), ii, 288. 



* The Nation and the AthencBum, April 16, 1921, p. 102, " The Genesis 

 of Science." 



^ Cardinal!, The Natives of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, 

 p. 24. 



* Georges Bertrin, Lourdes. 



' Jane Ellen Harrison, Ancient Art and Ritual, p. 52. 



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