Part 3

Superstition being thus shown to be as old as human history, the question naturally arises, not how it may have originated in the Dark Ages, but how it has kept its hold so tenaciously throughout all the succeeding centuries down to our own time.

Most peoples, barbarians even, believed in some sort of a future state, in the principle of good and evil, and of rewards and punishments. There needs no argument then to account for the insatiable longing to pry into futurity, and to discover its hidden mysteries. The same idea unsettled the minds of former generations, nor can it be truthfully said to have disappeared before the vaunted wisdom of this utilitarian age. Like all forbidden fruit, this may be said to be the subject of greatest anxiety to weak human kind.

What then is this talisman with the aid of which we strive to penetrate the secrets of the world beyond us?

Man being what he is, only “a little lower than the angels,” endowed with the supernatural power of calling up at will mental images of both the living and the dead, of building air-castles, and peopling them according to his fantasy, as well in Cathay as in Spain, of standing by the side of an absent friend on the summit of Mont Blanc, one moment among the snows, the next flitting through the garden spots of sunny Italy--if he is thus capable of transporting himself into an enchanted land by the mere exercise of the power of his imagination--what could better serve him as a medium of communication with the unknown, and what shall deter him from seeking to fathom its deepest mysteries? Napoleon said truly that the imagination governs the universe. Every one has painted his own picture of heaven and hell as well as Dante or Milton, or the divine mysteries as truly as Leonardo or Murillo. Surely, the imagination could go no further.

Assuming this to be true, there is little need to ask why, in this enlightened age, the attempt should be made to revive vagaries already decrepit, that would much better be allowed to go out with the departed century, unhonored and unsung. Such a question could proceed only from a want of knowledge of the true facts in the case.

But whether superstition is justified by the dictates of a sound common sense, is not so material here, as whether it actually does exist; and if so, to what extent. That is what we shall try to make clear in the succeeding pages. The inquiry grows interesting in many ways, but most of all, we think, as showing the slow stages by which the human mind has enfranchised itself from a species of slavery, without its counterpart in any direction to which we may turn for help or guidance. Even science, that great leveller of popular error, limps here. Certainly, what has existed as long as human history must be accepted as a more or less active force in human affairs. We are not, therefore, dealing with futilities.

Of the present status of superstition, the most that can be truthfully said is that some of its worst forms are nearly or quite extinct, some are apparently on the wane, while those representing, perhaps, the widest extremes (the most puerile and the most vital), such, for example, as relate to vapid tea-table gossip on the one hand, and to fatal presentiments on the other, continue quite as active as ever. Uncivilized beings are now supposed to be the only ones who still hold to the belief in witchcraft, although within a very few months it has been currently reported as a fact that the judge of a certain Colorado court admitted the plea of witchcraft to be set up, because, as this learned judge shrewdly argued, more than half the people there believed in it. The defendant, who stood charged with committing a murderous assault upon a woman, swore that she had bewitched him, and was acquitted by the jury, mainly upon his own testimony.

Unquestionably modern hypnotism comes very close to solving the problem of olden witchcraft, which so baffled the wisdom, as it tormented the souls and bodies, of our ancestors, with this difference: that, while witchcraft was believed to be a power to work evil, coming direct from his Satanic Majesty himself, hypnotism is a power or gift residing in the individual, like that of mesmerism.

But if it be true that there are very few believers in witchcraft among enlightened beings to-day, it cannot be denied that thousands of highly civilized men and women as firmly believe in some indefinable relation between man and the spirit world as in their own existence; while tens of thousands believe in such a relation between mind and mind. Indeed, the former class counts some very notable persons among its converts. For example, Camille Flammarion, the distinguished scientist, positively declares that he has had direct communication with hundreds of departed spirits. And the Reverend M. J. Savage, pastor of the Church of the Messiah, in New York, is reported to have announced himself a convert to spiritualism to his congregation not long ago.

The true explanation for all these different beliefs must be sought for, we think, deep down in the nature of man, which is much the same to-day in its relation to the supernatural world as it was in the days of our fathers of bigoted memory. In reality, the supernatural element exists to a greater or less degree in all of us, and no merely human agency can pretend to fix its limits.

Unquestionably, then, those beliefs which have exerted so potent an influence in the past over the minds or affairs of men, which continue to exert such influence to-day, and, for ought we know to the contrary, may extend that influence indefinitely, are not to be whistled down the wind, or kept hidden away under lock and key, especially when we reflect that the most terrible examples of the frailty of all human judgments concerning these beliefs have utterly failed to remove the groundwork upon which they rest.

There still remains the sentimental side of superstition to consider. What, for example, would become of much of our best literature, if all those apt and beautiful figures culled from the rich stores of ancient mythology--the very flowers of history, so to speak--were to be weeded out of it with unsparing hand? What would Greek and Roman history be with their gods and goddesses left out? With what loving and appreciative art our greatest poets have gathered up the scattered legends of the fading past. Some one has cunningly said that superstition is the poetry of life, and that of all men poets should be superstitious.

As a matter of history, it is well known that our Puritan ancestors came over here filled full of the prevalent superstitions of the old country; yet even they had waged uncompromising warfare against all such ceremonious observances as could be traced back to heathen mythology. Thus, although they cut down May-poles, they had too much reverence for the Bible to refuse to believe in witches. Writers like Mr. Hawthorne have supposed that the wild and extravagant mysteries of their savage neighbors, may, to some extent, have become incorporated with their own beliefs. However that may be, it is certain that the Puritan fathers believed in no end of pregnant omens, also in ghosts, apparitions, and witches, as well as in a personal devil, with whom, indeed, later on, they had no end of trouble. In short, if anything happened out of the common, the devil was in it. So say many to-day.

A certain amount of odium has attached itself to the Puritan fathers of New England, on this account, among unreflecting or ill-natured critics at least, just as if, upon leaving Old England, those people would be expected to leave their superstitions behind them, like so much useless luggage. As a matter of fact, rank superstition was the common inheritance of all peoples of that day and generation, whether Jew or Gentile, Frenchman or Dutchman, Virginian or New Englander. Of its wide prevalence in Old England we find ample proof ready to our hand. For example:

“At Boston, in Lincolnshire, Mr. Cotton being their former minister, when he was gone the bishop desired to have organs set up in the church, but the parish was unwilling to yield; but, however, the bishop prevailed to be at the cost to set them up. But they being newly up (not playing very often with them) a violent storm came in at one window and blew the organs to another window, and brake both organs and window down, and to this day the window is out of reputation, being boarded and not glazed.”

Still further to show the feeling prevailing in England toward superstition at the time of the settlement of this country, in the historical essay entitled “With the King at Oxford,” we find this anecdote: The King (Charles I.), coming into the Bodleian Library on a certain day, was shown a very curious copy of Virgil. Lord Falkland persuaded his Majesty to make trial of his fortune by thrusting a knife between the leaves, then opening the book at the place in which the knife was inserted. The king there read as follows:--

“Yet let him vexed bee with arms and warres of people wilde, And hunted out from place to place, an outlaw still exylde: Let him go beg for helpe, and from his childe dissevered bee, And death and slaughter vile of all his kindred let him see.”

The narrative goes on to say that the king’s majesty was “much discomposed” by this uncanny incident, and that Lord Falkland, in order to turn the king’s thoughts away from brooding over it, proposed making the trial himself.

We continue to draw irrefragable testimony to the truth of our position from the highest personages in the realm. Again, according to Wallington, Archbishop Laud, arch persecutor of the Puritans, has this passage in his diary: “That on such or such a day of the month he was made archbishop of Canterbury, and on that day, which was a great day of honor to him, his coach and horses sunk as they came over the ferry at Lambeth, in the ferry-boat, and he prayed that this might be no ill omen.”

Our pious ancestors put a good deal of faith in so-called “judgments,” or direct manifestations of the divine wrath toward evildoers, as all readers of Mather’s “Remarkable Providences” well know. But they were by no means alone in such beliefs. It is related of the poet Milton, after he became blind, that the Duke of York (later James II.) asked him if he did not consider the loss of his eyesight as a judgment inflicted upon him for what he had written of the late king. In reply Milton asked the duke, if such afflictions were to be regarded as judgments from heaven, in what manner he would account for the fate of the late king; ... he, the speaker, had only lost his eye, while the king had lost his head.”

John Josselyn, Gent., an Englishman, but no Puritan, who spent some time in New England, chiefly at Scarborough in Maine, published, in 1672, in England, a little book under the title of “New England’s Rarities Discovered.” Some things which Josselyn “discovered” would be rarities indeed to this generation. For instance, he describes the appearance of several prodigious apparitions--all of which has a value in enabling us properly to gauge the tone and temper of popular feeling where the book was written, and where it was published. One of his “rarities” is worth repeating here, if only for the pretty sentiment it embodies. He says of the twittering chimney-swallows, “that when about to migrate they commonly throw down (the chimney) one of their young into the room below, by way of gratitude,” presumably in return for the hospitalities of the house. He then goes on to say, “I have more than once observed that, against the ruin of a family, these birds will forsake the house and come no more.” This comes from a more or less close observer, who himself occupied the relation we desire to establish, namely that of a transplanted Englishman, so thoroughly grounded in old superstition that all the marvels he relates are told with an air of truth quite refreshing.

An amusing instance of how far prevalent superstition can lead astray minds usually enlightened is soberly set forth in Governor Winthrop’s celebrated history. It is a fit corollary to the organ superstition, just narrated.

“Mr. Winthrop the younger, one of the magistrates, having many books in a chamber, where there was corn of divers sorts, had among them one wherein the Greek Testament, the Psalter and the Common Prayer were bound together. He found the Common Prayer eaten with mice, every leaf of it, and not any of the two other touched, nor any other of his books, though there were above a thousand.”

All these superstitious beliefs were solemnly bequeathed by the fathers to their children under the sanction of a severe penal code, together with all the accumulated traditions of their own immediate ancestors. And in some form or other, whether masquerading under some thin disguise or foolish notion, superstition has continued from that day to this. As Polonius says:

“... ’Tis true, ’tis pity; And pity ’tis ’tis true.”

Although a great many popular beliefs may seem puerile in the extreme, they none the less go to establish the fact to be kept in mind. Since I began to look into the matter I have been most astonished at the number of very intelligent persons who take care to conform to prevailing beliefs in things lucky or the reverse. It is true Lord Bacon tells us that “in all superstitions wise men follow fools.” But this blunt declaration of his has undoubted reference to the schoolmen, and to the monastic legends which were such powerful aids in fostering the growth of superstition as it existed long before Bacon’s time:--

“A bone from a saintly anchorite’s cave, A vial of earth from a martyrs grave.”

The class of persons just spoken of, is, however, so keenly sensitive to ridicule that only some chance remark betrays their real mental attitude.