AN UPRUSH OF SUPERSTITION

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 1, 1 July 1925, Page 3

AN UPRUSH OF SUPERSTITION

"The world is experiencing to-day an extraordinary uprush of superstition. Like our primitive ancestors, we haye 1 our medicine men and our - magicians; and w 0 are eager to believe in effects without examining causes/ and in achievements without inspecting * the mechanisms to attain them," declares Invin Ednam, assistant professor of philosophy at Columbia University. 'T.lie subway news stands are littered with' a bastard crew of magazines ballyhooing .-short cuts to brain, power, will power, thought power, or personality plus. A provincial French apothecary sweeps to fame by telling the lame and the halo to mumble a specific incantation and be cured. Jfasseß of credulous people look to: glandular treatments- and ", to psycho-analysis as our forbears di>i to the rituals and spells of their witch, doctors. Like tribes oi savages, tormented by drought or deluge, famine or pestilence, we turn anywhere ami everywhereto be rescued. pKeudo-scicntiftc jargon is tlio descendant of priestly patter, and wo prefer its glitter to the toilsome lin- ' adorned methods of genuine science and pure reason." < i