40 THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 



We are too apt to consider the belief in luck, ghosts, fairies, 

 witches, dreams, amulets, charms and premonitions as being enter- 

 tained by ignorant people only. A very little inquiry will serve to 

 dispel this too partial view. Superstition is apparently spiritualistic. 

 It has been transmitted to us from a time when some reason had to 

 be assigned for phenomena that were inexplicable on natural grounds, 

 and it is really astonishing to what an extent it maintains its hold 

 upon the minds of intelligent (or, shall I say, of otherwise intelligent ?) 

 people. The belief in dreams is, perhaps, most widely spread, and 

 chiefly among women. Lucky and unlucky times and seasons 

 influence the actions of many persons whom it would be a mistake 

 to characterize as weak-minded, only in so far as this inheritance 

 from savagery is concerned. 



Powerfully occult influences have always been attributed by 

 primitive man to the heavenly bodies, and especially so to the moon, 

 and in this year of grace, one thousand eight hundred and ninety- 

 nine, there are farmers all over the world who regulate their sowing 

 and planting, their killing of cows and pigs, by her phases, just as 

 their wives take these into account in the making of butter and in 

 the weaning of their infants. Even the weather is popularly regarded 

 as being regulated by Luna's influence, and so wise a man as Sir 

 John Herschel actually prepared a tabular statement illustrative of 

 his belief, but of course no possible use can be made of it by meteor- 

 ologists of to-day. Sir John tried to square his acquired astronom- 

 ical knowledge with his inherited tendency to the crudities of 

 astrology. 



One of the first indications given by the new-born infant that 

 he is henceforth to be regarded as a member of society is the mak- 

 ing of a noise, or as Shakespeare has it in King Lear: 



" When we are born we cry, that we are come 

 To this great stage of fools," '• 



and elsewhere he says : " We came crying hither." 



From this time forward it may be observed that noise of one 

 kind or other, often merely for its own sake, enters largely into many 

 of the relations and pursuits of life. 



According to the theory on which this paper is based, the child 

 exhibits much move of the savage than does the fulUgrown man, and 



