What's What in America

by Eugene V. Brewster

Superstitions

Superstition has done more harm than war, famine and pestilence.

It has been said that all men are tainted with superstition, in greater or less degree, and that they are credulous from the cradle to the grave. We may be particularly strong on Friday, on the thirteenth, on walking under a ladder, and other foolish superstitions which have thousands of times been exposed, yet we find ourselves weak on something else equally absurd. We are credulous because we are naturally sincere, which indicates that superstitious belief proceeds from honorable principles. All men have a strong attraction to truth, and the man who is the most deceitful is usually the most disposed to belief that other men respect truth. And thus, before rejecting the statements of others, we usually require to detect something in them which is not in accord with our previous knowledge, unless, perchance, we have cause to suspect a design to deceive us. Credulity is, therefore, natural, in part, and it is also the result of the faulty education that we have received from our distant ancestors.

Perhaps many of the superstitions owe their origin to religion. If people had not been taught about devils, hells, miracles and other mysteries, they would not be so susceptible to other beliefs equally absurd.

It is commonly known that gamblers are very superstitious, but fashions change with them as they do with everything else; for, where unsuccessful gamblers used formerly to make a knot in their linen, to change their luck, they now content themselves with changing their chairs, and performing other silly things which some successful gamester has lately done. And so with other superstitious persons. As a security against cowardice, it was once only necessary to wear a pin plucked from the winding sheet of a corpse; now, all one needs is to rub the back of a hunchback. To insure a prosperous accouchement to your wife, you once had to tie her girdle to a bell and ring it three times, while now all that is necessary is to see the new moon over your right shoulder and wish. To get rid of warts, you were to fold up in a rag as many peas as you had warts, and throw them into the highroad, when the unlucky person who picked them up became your substitute; but now, they may be cured by finding a pin, head toward you. To cure a tooth-ache you had to solicit alms in honor of St. Lawrence, but in these enlightened times it can be done by staring at a horseshoe over the door. And so on, ad infinitum do we find the superstitions, like the fashions, ever changing.

The birth of science was the death of superstition, said Huxley; but, alas, it is a slow and painful death. But, science is only half born as yet, and that is why superstition is only half dead.

P. T. Barnum was known as the prince of humbuggers, yet few men have ever lived who had a keener insight into human nature. He knew the human heart, he knew its weaknesses, and he knew how to profit by his knowledge.

The gullibility of the public is shown in various ways: first, by the prosperity of the palmists, astrologers and mediums; second, by the success of all get-rich-quick enterprises; third, by the crowds who patronize the street fakirs who sell articles which nobody can operate but themselves; and fourth, by the apparent success of certain officials who operate through their press agents.

Palmistry, graphology, physiognomy, phrenology, clairvoyancy, chirognomancy, and the other "sciences," have not yet been accepted by the powers that be, fortunately, as an infallible detector of crime. Very few, indeed, of the believers in these isms and ologies would care to have their fate in court determined by experts in one or more of these theories. Only a few hundred years ago, persons were tried and convicted of witchcraft by the same sort of "experts," and the result was that the accused had a very slight chance of acquittal.