490 I^ALLACIKS. 



one will examine in what circnm- 

 stances most of those things agree 

 which in different ages and by dif- 

 ferent portions of the human race 

 have been considei'ed as omens or 

 prognostics of some interesting event, 

 whether calamitous or fortunate, they 

 will be found very generally charac- 

 terised by this peculiarity, that they 

 cause the mind to think of that of 

 which they are therefore supposed to 

 forbode the actual occurrence. " Talk 

 of the devil and he will appear," has 

 passed into a proverb. Talk of the 

 devil, that is, raise the idea, and the 

 reality will follow. In times when 

 the appearance of that personage in 

 a visible form was thought to be no 

 Tinfrequent occurrence, it has doubt- 

 less often happened to persons of 

 vivid imagination and susceptible 

 nerves that talking of the devil has 

 caused them to fancy they saw him ; 

 as, even in our more incredulous days, 

 listening to ghost stories predisposes 

 us to see ghosts ; and thus, as a prop 

 to the a priori fallacy, there might 

 come to be added an auxiliary fallacy 

 of mal-observation, with one of false 

 generalisation grounded on it. Fal- 

 lacies of different orders often herd 

 or cluster together in this fashion, 

 one smoothing the way for another. 

 But the origin of the superstition is 

 evidently that which we have as- 

 signed. In like manner it has been 

 imiversally considered unlucky to 

 speak of misfortune. The day on 

 which any calamity happened has 

 been considered an unfortunate day, 

 and there has been a feeling every- 

 where, and in some nations a reli- 

 gious obligation, against transacting 

 any important business on that day ; 

 for on such a day our thoughts are 

 likely to be of misfortune. For a 

 similar reason any untoward occur- 

 rence in commencing an undertak- 

 ing has been considered ominous of 

 failure, and often, doubtless, has really 

 contributed to it, by putting the per- 

 sons engaged in the enterprise more 

 or less out of spirits : but the belief 

 has equally prevailed where the dis- 



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ide* 



agreeable circumstance was, in 

 pendently of superstition, too insig- 

 nificant to depress the spirits by any 

 influence of its o^vn. All know the 

 story of Caesar's accidentally stum- 

 bling in the act of landing on the 

 African coast, and the presence 'of 

 mind with which he converted the 

 direful presage into a favourable one 

 by exclaiming, "Africa, I embrace 

 thee." Such omens, it is true, were 

 often conceived as warnings of the 

 future, given by a friendly or a hos- 

 tile deity ; but this very superstition 

 grew out of a pre-existing tendency : 

 the god was supposed to send, as an 

 indication of what was to come, some- 

 thing which people were already dis- 

 posed to consider in that light. So 

 in the case of lucky or unlucky names, 

 Herodotus tells us how the Greeks, 

 on the way to Mycale, were encoui- 

 aged in their enterprise by the arrival 

 of a deputation from Samos, one of 

 the members of which was named 

 Hegesistratus, the leader of armies. 



Cases may be pointed out in whicli 

 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 ev-^tpfiei of the Greeks, and favete 

 Unguis or bona verba quc^so of the 

 Romans, evince the care with which 

 they endeavoured to repress the utter- 

 ance of any word expressive or sug- 

 gestive of ill-fortune ; not from notions 

 of delicate politeness, to which their 

 general mode of conduct and feeling 

 had very little reference, but from 

 bonu fide alarm lest the event so sug- 

 gested to the imagination should in 

 fact occur. Some vestige of a similar 

 superstition has been known to exist 

 among uneducated persons even in 

 our own day : it is thought an un- 

 christian 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 mar- 



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