156 Hutton Webster 



out to fish, or seamen to take a voyage, or landsmen a journey, 

 or domestic servants to enter a new place — on a Friday.-^ 



CONCLUSION 



It is fairly obvious, from the foregoing discussion, that the 

 belief in days lucky and unlucky, has operated, like other super- 

 stitions, to retard the development of mankind. They hinder in- 

 dividual initiative and tend to prevent the undertaking of lengthy 

 enterprises which may be interrupted by the recurrence of an 

 unfavorable period. Their elaborate development compels fitful, 

 intermittent labor rather than a steady and continuous occupa- 

 tion. The Burman, for example. " is so fettered by his horoscope 

 and the lucky and unlucky days for him recorded therein, which 

 are taught him in rhymes from childhood, that the character has 

 been given him by strangers of alternate idleness and energy. 

 But both are enforced by the numerous days and seasons when 

 he may not work without disaster to himself. Unlucky days 

 cause him so much fear that he will resort to all sorts of excuses 

 to avoid business on them. Similarly, on lucky days he will 

 work beyond his strength, because he is assured of success."^ 

 These remarks, by a keen observer, are capable of a wide applica- 

 tion to various primitive races. The belief in unfavorable sea- 

 sons may even directly afifect political and social progress where, 

 as in modern Ashanti and in ancient Rome, assemblies could 

 not be held, nor courts of justice stand open, nor armies engage 

 the enemy, when the unlucky day came round. It is equally 

 obvious that all such beliefs play into the hands of the astrologer 

 and magician, tending further to strengthen the bonds with which 

 superstition enchains its votaries. 



Yet the picture is not wholly dark. To the student of primi- 

 tive religion and sociology nothing is more interesting than the 

 contemplation of that unconscious though beneficent process 



"" Chambers's Book of Days, i. 42. See also John Aubrey's quaint essay 

 Dn "Day-fatality; or, some observations of days lucky and unlucky" 

 (Miscellanies upon P'arious Subjects, London, 1784, pp. 3-36). 



^ R. C. Temple, " Burma," in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and 

 Ethics, iii. 29. 



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