INTRODUCTION. xxi 



coming- struck with the fact that ordinary society is 

 still infiltrated with superstitions of all sorts. And 

 this could not be otherwise. You reap what you 

 sow. While schools have been teaching the natural, 

 the churches have been teaching the sztpernatiLral, 

 and so with some sense in the people's minds we 

 find a mixture of a lot of traditional unsoundness, 

 inherited through hundreds of generations, and im- 

 bibed in childhood by teaching. A superstition 

 would seem to be a sort of nicrhtmare that cannot 

 be entirely shaken off. The mother, the nurse, the 

 mistresses of infant schools, the priest, all stamp it 

 on the child's brain — a sort of indelible stamp. 



What do you mean by a superstitious mind ? 

 That attitude of a person who, from general ignor- 

 ance of nature, accepts supposed facts without any 

 attempt to investigate their fiozv, or their zv/iy, and 

 therefore, without applying to them the touchstone 

 of other already ivcll-asccrtaincd facts, through 

 accurate investigation, and logic, or the process of 

 putting two and two together. 



Superstitions then become the luyt/iical (a^cts, swal- 

 lowed iiem. con., and form the basis of the reasoning 

 structure of the individual. That individual never 

 concerns himself or herself with the ordinary laws 

 of nature. He or she has been taught other laws. 



In Assyrian days, the minds of the people were 

 in expectation of phenomena. Their universe was 

 filled with both good and evil doers. Under such 

 conditions a notion started by one mind — maybe in 



