FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION. 313 



tion from Samos, one of the members of which was named 

 Hegesistratus, the leader of armies. 



Cases may be pointed out in which something which could 

 have no real effect but to make persons think of misfortune, 

 was regarded not merely as a prognostic, but as something 

 approaching to an actual cause of it. The EU^T}JUEC of the 

 Greeks, audfavete linguis, or bona verba qu&so, of the Romans, 

 evince the care with which they endeavoured to repress the 

 utterance of any word expressive or suggestive of ill fortune ; 

 not from notions of delicate politeness, to which their general 

 mode of conduct and feeling had very little reference, but 

 from bond fide alarm lest the event so suggested to the imagi- 

 nation should in fact occur. Some vestige of a similar super- 

 stition has been known to exist among uneducated persons 

 even in our own day : it is thought an unchristian thing to 

 talk of, or suppose, the death of any person while he is alive. 

 It is known how careful the Romans were to avoid, by an 

 indirect mode of speech, the utterance of any word directly 

 expressive of death or other calamity : how instead of mortuus 

 est they said vixit ; and " be the event fortunate or otherwise " 

 instead of adverse. The name Maleventum, of which Sal- 

 masius so sagaciously detected the Thessalian origin (MaAoc> 

 MaAoevroe), they changed into the highly propitious denomi- 

 nation, Beneventum ; Egesta into Segesta ; and Epidamnus, 

 a name so interesting in its associations to the reader of 

 Thucydides, they exchanged for Dyrrhachium, to escape the 

 perils of a word suggestive of damnum or detriment. 



" If an hare cross the highway," says Sir Thomas Browne,* 

 " there are few above threescore that are not perplexed thereat ; 

 which notwithstanding is but an augurial terror, according to 

 that received expression, Inauspicatum dat iter oblatus lepus. 

 And the ground of the conceit was probably no greater than 

 this, that a fearful animal passing by us portended unto us 

 something to be feared; as upon the like consideration the 

 meeting of a fox presaged some future imposture." Such 



* Vulgar Errors, book v. chap. 21. 



