The Undying Credulities

( Originally Published 1916 )

"SUPERSTITION," says Lippert, "has a tenacity of life which no religion possesses."

In the second part of his "Christentum, Yolksglaube and Volksbrauch" there is an interesting list of pre-Christian superstitions still prevalent in Europe.

Almost all of our Christmas customs are survivals of heathendom, though made beautiful by the spirit of the Christ-Child.

The religious feeling is the property of certain minds, of a limited number, even among church folk; but superstitions are in every mind. Some people are religious; all people are superstitious.

They have changed religions several times in England; they still retain the old Druid fancies. Long after old faiths lose their power old credulities hold their grip. When the gods fled from Greece they settled in the backwoods of Christen-dom. They ceased to be respectable and adored; they became bush-whackers and feared.

The Venus that inspired Praxiteles became the Venus that lived in the mountain and lured Tannhâuser to his ruin.

The religions of India are dead; the folk-lore of India is still alive.

What is preached in temples varies with time; what is told to children by mothers at bedtime is fixed and eternal.

The theses of theologians in one century are obsolete in the next century; but Little Red Ridinghood and Jack the Giant Killer are as fresh with youth and interest now in the nursery as they ever were.

Bluebeard will outlive Napoleon; and the Old Woman that Lived in a Shoe has a dynasty of fame beyond that of Queen Victoria.

When beliefs disappear from the consciousness of the race they sink into the subconsciousness. The visible river of faith becomes subterranean streams of credulity.

The high priests that ruled Egypt are no more; the prophets of Israel have ceased; the medieval monks and hermits have gone; the echoes of Luther and Loyola, Calvin, John Knox, and Wesley grow fainter; new preachers, new gospels, new moral programmes appear; but the clairvoyants, palmists, fortune-tellers, astrologers, table-rappers, and all the tribe of hocus-pocus are doing as lively a business, and by the same methods, in New York, London, and Paris as they ever did in Samarcand and Heliopolis, Palmyra, and Babylon.

Religion is progressive development and adapts itself to the development of the intellect. Superstiton is the immovable orthodoxy, that adapts itself to nothing, reigning forever in its pristine shapes.