Superstition 29 



of race as opposed to survival of self, whether he will 

 or no. If death never invaded this sentiment, man 

 would take life for granted and never think about the 

 continuance of life, or survival, whether of his race in 

 this world or of those he has loved and lost in some 

 world to come. This idea of survival, I think you 

 will find at the core of all early man's beliefs. It is 

 the meaning of the word superstition. Says a writer: 

 "Those who escaped in battle or survived death were 

 called super stites, super stitiosi, or survivors. Cicero 

 says, 'they who prayed all day that their children 

 might overlive them were called superstitious.' Lac- 

 tantius objects to this derivation, but says the word 

 got its meaning from the worship of deceased parents 

 and relations by the superstites or survivors, or from 

 men holding the memory of the dead in superstitious 

 veneration. Thus Cicero and Lactantius agree in 

 connecting the origin of the word with the relations 

 between the dead and the living who survive them. 

 Cicero gave it his sanction when he wished to conse- 

 crate the image of his dead daughter to the gods, who, 

 he did not hesitate to affirm, were men who had sur- 

 vived death. In any case the word originated in some 

 mysterious connection between the dead and the living, 

 the deceased and those who survived, the world that is 

 seen and the world that is unseen; whether it might be 

 that it arose from the ' promise made to the seed of the 

 woman,' and it was considered a great misfortune to 

 die childless, or to survive one's children; or that the 

 death of one person might be influenced by the death 



