Current Superstitions | Page 6

of interest to learn what analogies
the practice has among races in a primitive condition of culture. The
babe of the Pueblo of Sia, when on the fourth day (four being a sacred
number) for the first time he is taken from the dark chamber, is ritually

presented to his father the Sun; similarly, in a superstition of the
present series (I know not how generally observed) Sunday is said to be
the day on which the infant is first to be carried into the sunshine. It is
likely that such continuing customs represent feeble echoes of
pre-Christian dedicatory ceremonies, which in the first instance were
themselves founded on a corresponding habit of thought; according to
an opposite, yet connected system of notions, we find Protestant
Christianity still preserving a memento of the world-old and universal
belief in a crowd of malicious spirits, prepared at every moment to take
up their residence in the convenient shelter of the human frame, as a
hermit crab watches for a suitable shell in which to make his home. It
must be owned that the volume of observances connected with infancy,
here presented, is very inadequate; it is certain that a nurse of a century
ago would have been familiar with a vastly more extensive array of
duties and cautions. As we go back in time and culture, action becomes
more restricted. Where the effects of any line of conduct are unknown,
adherence to precedent is all-important; every part of the life must be
administered according to a complicated system of rules, while
common prudence is considered as inseparable from religious
obligation.
The following section presents us with interesting material, in the
exhibition of ideas and customs which are maintained by children
themselves, and which they learn from one another rather than from
their elders. It is true that these are of necessity the reflection of the
conceptions and practice of older persons; but, according to the law of
their nature, it is found that children often exhibit a peculiar
conservatism, in virtue of which habits of thought still exercise control,
which among men and women have been outgrown. This is illustrated
in popular games and songs which children have orally preserved; and
the same is true of their superstitions. Women, especially, who may
peruse this collection will be surprised to find how many of the items
here recorded will seem familiar, and at the same time to have received
credence; in the case of a particularly clear-minded person, free from
any disposition toward credulity, nearly a hundred of these
superstitions were remembered. The ideas in question, perhaps at no
time more than half believed, have frequently altogether faded into

oblivion.
Attention should be paid, also, to the imaginative power of the youthful
mind, and the manner in which beliefs are visualized, and appear as
realities of perception. To illustrate this principle have been included a
few examples belonging rather to individual than to general opinion.
The little girl who without any direct instruction imagines that the light
of the heaven gleams through the orifices we call stars, who sees
celestial beings in meteor form winging their way across the skies, or
who is surrounded by the benevolent spirits which her discriminating
education, banishing the terrors of the supernatural world, has
permitted to exist for her comprehension, illustrates that readiness of
fancy and control of vision by expectation which belongs to humanity
in the reverse degree of the reflective habit. Herein childish conceptions
and vivacity of feeling represent the human faculty which education
may control but cannot obliterate.
Beliefs relating to the influence of physiognomy present us with a very
limited anthology of popular ideas, which in elaborate developments
have been expanded into pseudo-sciences, and fill whole libraries of
learned misinformation. These notions may be divided into two classes.
On the one hand appear indications founded on natural analogies, as
when we still speak of close-fistedness. On the other side, many of
these associations are arbitrary, as when the study of spots on the nails
is supposed to give means for determining future fortune. Such
conclusions depend partly on the correct opinion that in the cradle lies
the future man, with all elements of his complex nature, and partly on
external marks, the interpretation of which is purely arbitrary.
The chapter on "Projects" presents the reader with a class of usages,
sufficiently foolish when considered in themselves, but none the less
demanding attention, as exhibiting, in full energy, the survival, at the
end of the nineteenth century, of the practice of divination. It is true
that these attempts to forecast the future are commonly made in a
sportive manner and only with partial belief, being now for the most
part reduced to social sports. They belong also almost exclusively to
the female sex, who by way