Image from Pixabay under Pixabay License
A BRIEF SKETCH OF SUPERSTITION.
By Scaife, Hazel Lewis, 1872-1939
Few things have influenced and controlled
the destiny of man so largely as superstition.
It has often become a part of his religion,
shaped his habits and governed his life. Su-
perstition generally decreases in proportion to
mental development. It dominates the life of
the savage to whom nature presents, as he
thinks, one continual display of supernatural
effects.
The wild natives of Australia tremble with
awe at the mournful cry of the night-hawk
" carrying away the soul of a child ; " the
Hindoo believes - that " two invincible deities
ride upon the radiant summit of clouds as
upon a well-trained steed ; " thousands of new-
born babes of heathen parentage have been
put to death in Madagascar, because they
chanced to be " born in an unlucky hour ; "
the Eskimo assumes that the Aurora Borealie
is caused by departed spirits playing ball with
the head of a walrus; American Indian My-
thology tells in detail of the passage of the
dead warrior to the " Happy Hunting Ground,"
and in one grand unwritten poem it accounts
for all that the eye can see and the ear can
hear.
The almost universal belief of aboriginal
tribes in immortality and their burnt sacrifices
and offerings at their orgies to the Great Un-
seen, must at one time have had some deep
significance. They bear a striking analogy to
the old Mosaic Mites, and may be these savage
superstitions degenerated from the True Re-
ligion which, after long ages, was allowed to
lapse into a belief in animism and in the
powers of the wizard and the medicine man.
The North American Indian's idea of the
" Great Spirit " and the " Happy Hunting
Ground," must have originally been a faith in
God and a hope of heaven :
' ' Lo ! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind ;
His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way ;
Yet simple nature to his hope has given,
Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heaven."
—Pope.
As far back as the search-light of history
has penetrated, it has found the ancient cen-
tres of civilization hid in the gloom of super-
stition and the fountain head of true history
starts afar off in the dim of the distant past,
where it trickles out of a quagmire through
which no historian has ever waded.
If the literature of the Hindoos and Per-
sians be excepted, then the earliest authentic
records we have of superstition are found in
Scriptural narrative. We are there told that
the magicians of Egypt attempted to imitate
certain miracles of Moses :
" Then Pharaoh called the wise men and
sorcerers ; now the magicians of Egypt did
likewise with .their enchantments." — Ex.
viL, 11.
The Levitical law declared :
" A man or a woman that hath a familiar
spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put
to death."— Lev. xx., 27.
Later on we read that Nebuchadnezzer com-
manded the Chaldeans to be cut in pieces be-
cause they requested a delay before attempting
to interpret his dream, which the king saw was
but an excuse " to prepare lies and corrupt words
to speak before him." When Nebuchadnezzer
called on Daniel, the prophet made answer :
" The secret which the king hath demanded
cannot the wise men, the astrologers, the ma-
gicians, the soothsayers say unto the king ;
but there is a God in heaven that revealeth
secrets, and maketh known unto the king
Nebuchadnezzer what shall be in the latter
days."— Dan. ii., 27, 28.
The temples of antiquity, in whose shades
and recesses the priests were supposed to do
wonders, were prostituted to superstition, the
Hebrew race alone keeping its religion pure.
Egypt was a land of superstition, and there was
scarcely a variety of bird or beast that was not
held sacred by the inhabitants ; Babylon fol-
lowed after strange gods, while Grecian My-
thology reached an aesthetic excellence ; Cicero,
himself an augur, writes of the " wise men,
augurs, and diviners," and the oracle at Delphi
decided the fate, not only of individuals, but
of the nation.
During the Middle Ages, the darkest period
of the world's history, when Christianity went
into a lethargy and the light of learning
waned, superstition gained complete control
over the human mind. During this " long dark
winter," the ordeal, the most brutal and absurd
superstition the world has ever known, came
into high repute, and the innocent victims,
accused of crime and forced to walk hot plough-
shares or dip their arms in boiling water as a
test of guilt, alone knew that the ordeal was
but superstition in the hands of power.
Next came the popular superstition that the
world would end with the year, 1000 A. D.,
when legal documents always began with
the expression, "As the world isnoio drawing to
its close."
When an animated revival of learning started
in the 16th century, the pall of superstition
and magic began to lift itself from the semi-
civilized sphere. Science stepped forward and
declared that it would investigate the super-
stitions and wonderful claims of the magicians
then rife, and as soon as the existing conditions
were pronounced false, the clouds were pushed
farther back and the light of truth began to
shine once more on a benighted world. Truth,
which had so long been fettered to earth by the
bans of ignorance, vice and superstition again
rose triumphant, and the "long black night"
gave way to a still brighter day.
Modern superstition, surrounded as it is by
every influence to dispel it, can offer no excuse
for existing at all. It has centered, more or
less, around hypnotism and beliefs concerning
coincidences, dreams, presentiments, appari-
tions, table rappings, and, above all, spiritual-
ism and clairvoyance. Minor superstitions,
such as those concerning Friday and the number
thirteen, are too absurd to deserve even passing
notice.
About the middle of the 18th century,
Mesmer, a physician and an astrologer, at-
tempted to account for the supposed force
which he believed the stars exerted upon man
by assuming that it was electricity ; afterwards,
discarding this theory, he attributed it to mag-
netism, and finally he concluded that by strok-
ing a diseased body with a magnet he might,
effect a cure. Mesmer's experiments resulted
in the discovery of that wonderful power
which by certain " passes " or strokes of the
hand, or by other means of procedure, makes
the subject fall into a deep slumber and his
mind subservient to the will of the operator.
(It is claimed that diseases were cured in this
way in the earliest days by priests in the re-
cesses of temples in Egypt, Babylonia, and in
other eastern countries.)
Mesmer added fraud to his discovery, which
being detected, caused a re-action in the excited
mind of the public, and he died denounced as
an impostor. Mesmerism, stripped of its super-
stitions and absurdities is now known as hyp-
notism or animal magnetism. In certain Eu-
ropean countries, hypnotism was once practiced
so generally for improper purposes that prohib-
itory laws were enacted. Very recently in our
own country a hypnotized person, who commit-
ted murder, was acquitted by the courts, while
the hypnotist was convicted of murder in the
first degree. By the uneducated mind hypnot-
ism is looked upon as a supernatural perform-
ance, notwithstanding the fact that it has been
physiologically explained, and is now a repu-
table science.
In table-rappings, clairvoyance and spiritu-
alism, fraud has been so of ten detected that it is
impossible for the unbiased investigator to say
whether there be even anything in them at all.
The courts have declared that clairvoyants may
be prosecuted for obtaining money under false
pretenses, while Post-office authorities appre-
hend them for using the mails for fraudulent
purposes.
Lord Kelvin claims, " One-half of hypnot-
ism and clairvoyance is fraud and the other
half is bad observation." While there may be,
and doubtless is, fraud practiced in connection
with hypnotism, it does not deserve to be pro-
nounced totally false by the same authority
which declares, "Science is bound by the ever-
lasting law of honor to face fearlessly every
problem which can fairly be presented to it."
Hypnotism has stood its test to the satisfaction
of science, while clairvoyance has never been
presented as a problem.
The rapping feature of recent spiritualistic
growth had its origin, less than one hundred
years ago, in a haunted house in the State of
New York. The rappings were similar to those
in "A True Ghost Story." When the most trying
questions were answered the excitement became
intense, committees failed to detect fraud, and
the news of the claimed discovery spread. As
a result, there are papers and magazines pub-
lished all over the world in the interest of
Spiritualism, and now there are said to be
more than one million members of the Spirit-
ualist Church in America alone. To-day it is
wrecking the minds of hundreds, and if it is
all fraud, it is time for a crusade to be made
against it.
Some remarkable coincidences in connection
with dreams, apparitions and presentiments are
on record. Whether they be the product of a
disordered nervous system or a vivid imagina-
tion, whether they be a high order of mental
phenomena, whether they be a display of some
abstract principle, like distance, space, and
eternity, not intended for the human mind to
comprehend, they must first be cleared of the
superstitions surrounding them, and possibly
some psychological truth may be discovered,
which for long years has been misunderstood
and abused.
Telepathy, the alleged influence which one
mind may exert upon another through infinite
distance^ is being investigated and experimented
with. Indeed, the English Committee of the In-
ternational Society for Psychical Research, after
examining 17,000 reported cases of apparitions,
hallucinations and presentiments, etc., con-
cludes :
" Between death and apparitions of the dying
person a connection exists which is not due to
chance alone. This we hold as a proved fact.'''
In the blackest soil the most beautiful
plants take root and sometimes the seeds sown
lie covered and hid until the germ is ready to
expand, when slowly it forces its way through
and continues to grow long after the hand
which dropped it has withered. So it has been
with the seed planted in superstition, and but
for the superstition of ancient and medieval
times the foundations might never have been
laid that resulted in Modern Science. The
ground work of Astronomy is traced to Baby-
lonian astrologers who observed the heavenly
bodies searching for signs to foretell future
events on earth, and as late as the year 1609
A. D., Kepler made his grand discoveries —
growths sprung up in the midst of his mystical
astrological speculations ; the efforts of the
visionary alchemist to change substances into
gold and the search for an elixir to restore the
aged to immortal youth, gave birth to the
science of Chemistry. These and other sciences,
which had similar origins, sprang up from tiny,
seemingly worthless seed. But nurtured ten-
derly through the years they have reached that
growth which knows no killing frost, and in the
years to come, freed from the influences of
superstition, the tree of human knowledge, into
which truth alone now is grafted, will grow and
grow till the end of time.
Finish