312 REPORTS. 



local investigations. Indeed, so abundant is the harvest 

 therein reaped and garnered, that subsequent gleaners will 

 find it difficult to gather anything local that is really new in 

 principle. The most that we can now hope to do, is to record 

 successive and additional illustrations and incidents to prove 

 that the same old beliefs are still current, and that they keep 

 frequently cropping up, under slightly varying conditions, 

 which go to prove that this old-time faith yet counts among 

 us many consistent followers, and in its own essential quality, 

 hardly seems to alter at all. 



This persistence of belief is curious, and is well worth 

 noting ; though it may not be quite so interesting as the 

 discovery of actual novelties would be. Yet it presents 

 certain strange psychological phenomena ; and it conclusively 

 proves that a considerable degree of intellectual acuteness, 

 and mental culture, and social refinement may exist — and 

 indeed do exist — in the very self-same persons who also 

 harbour many a crude form of superstition, and are influenced 

 by phases of unaccountable credulity. Indeed, this kind of 

 traditional faith seems to be in no way changed by scholastic 

 learning. As a case in point, take the widely-spread local 

 belief in fatalism — the belief that what is to be will be, in 

 spite of all that we can do to prevent it. Popular opinion 

 holds, for instance, that we ought to do all that we can to 

 avert an evil, or cure an illness, — at the same time asserting 

 that nothing that we can do will really have any permanent 

 effect. If the evil is to come, it will come ; if the illness is 

 predestined to be fatal, it will be fatal. If one points out 

 the illogical character of such reasoning as this, and the utter 

 futility of taking remedial measures which, if such arguments 

 are true, would be entirely unavailing, we are met by the 

 rejoinder that : — We are ' commanded ' to do what we can. 

 And such asserted 4 command ' is supposed to finally settle 

 the matter. 



Yet perhaps after all there is more real excuse for this 

 credulous aspect of mind than would at first sight appear to 

 be reasonable. For very startling coincidences do often occur — 

 coincidences that no one can explain, and which yet no one 

 can deny. I mean, for instance, such coincidences as one 

 often observes, say, between the use or working of a certain 

 ' charm ' or ' spell,' and the sudden and inexplicable disappear- 

 ance of the evil, or the illness, or whatever else it may be, 

 that such 4 charm ' is supposed and intended to avert or 

 remove. One can hardly wonder if in some of these cases 

 coincidence is mistaken for causation ; and that in minds 



