SUPERSTITIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 136, 11 June 1927, Page 8

SUPERSTITIONS.

It did n..t surprise me to notice that the London and North-Eastern Railway Company have abolished the number thirteen from their sleeping cars, writes John Blunt in the "Daily Mail." In doing so they are only acknowledging that prejudices are a powerful factor in life, even in this age, which is supposed to be free from the influence of superstitions. Indeed, ]«eople who ostentatiously ignore such superstitions know very little, as a rule, not alone about the nature of humanity in general, but even about their own nature. For it is not logic chiefly that influence mankind, but all sorts of other impulses. Moreover, the lopic of the most logical person is a very relative affair. It seems to me quite reasonable that people should dislike thirteen. Even the man who disdains the usual superstitions and goes out of his way to disregard and ridicule them is frequently the slave of other superstitions. Fads of all'kinds flourish in these days, and those who laugh at old-fashioned superstitions are frequently the slaves of all manner of cranky notions. The tiuth is that life is a profoundly mysterious thinp, and that lopic d<>es not explain everything. It mipht be said, indeed, that it explains only a very little, and that we are all groping in the dark. And it is that recognised fact.which gives popular superstitions their hold. It is not so very long ago that we were all in the state of those savage tribes who shelter themselves behind magic and taboos. The instinct is there still, and the man who thinks it unlucky to walk under a ladder or to start a journey on a Friday is only obeying, in his own way. an impulse handed down to him from his primitive ancestors. Moreover, it is probable that all rooted superstitions are founded upon some real event. The origin of certain superstitions—such, for instance, as the antipathy to thirteen—can be traced, and therefore it seems probable that, if we only knew enough, we could trace the origins of them all. There is a cause for everything, and nothing can happen either in the world of ideas or the world of action that is not the result of something else. ® Many people who observe superstitions are not so much superstitious as cautious. Thev argue that it is just possible that there is something in them, and therefore they obey them, although they don't particularly believe in them'. This, it might be argued, is rather a cowardly attitude—but are we not all behaving in a similar manner about other matters? Don't we all constantly take precautions against the most improbable occurrences?