The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 1908. MODERN AND ANCIENT SUPERSTITION

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 3, 30 January 1908, Page 21

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 1908. MODERN AND ANCIENT SUPERSTITION

fllE poet has it, as regards the future, that, ' Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know '. . <dfc%p\S£V But the impatience of many to know what P Jejj&T oi S°od or of evil is locked up in the comTr^ ing years has raised up a parasitic class and given birth to all sorts of vain and foolish arts and inventions to gratify the wish to" penetrate the future. We are proud of our advance in science, and of the manner in, which education is placed within the reach of the poorest. Yet the, spread of scientific •knowledge and the . elimination of illiteracy has been unable to prevail o,ver a superstitious trust in the qccult powers of the '- futurist ' who., sitting, in a frowsy parlor in a back street, professes to tell the course of true-love biy playing~car,ds or the lees in a coffee-cup, anil to (open to others the way to a fortune which' has not smiled upon herself. • - A 1 successful prosecution for fortune-telling which took place last week in Dunedin is a fresh reminder to us that," despite the -scientist and the schoolmaster, this is the golden age of the charlatan "who claims to project his vision into the. unexplored fields of the, future. It is not- so much lack of education as of reli- ~ ' gious faith that (according ,to the rationalist Lecky) accounts for the - increase of epidemics of superstition at various periods o! history. * And the , clumsy ' f utu- . rist ' ' that vaunts his or her brazen claims through the advertising columns of the secular press to-day, is, after aU, merely the unofficial and more or less degraded lineal descendant, in the moral and social order, of the Egyptian soothsayer, the Greek oracle, the Roman augur and hauruspex, the •medieval and Puritan' diviners and astrologers, the ' wise 4 men ' and 'wiseNvomen ' of belated villages, the Merlins, the Nostradamuses, the Dr. Does,- and the rest of the olden tribe"' of pri'ers into the secrets which Providence wisely conceals alike' from" knaves and dupes.,. We - may smile as we read how „ v.

-Augustus, ha. ing b oversight - ,l - Put^on his kft shoe 'fore the right, Had .li cc to have been slain that day " ;' By soldiers mutin ing for pay.' • --' •It may seom strange* to us that Cicero should . occupy himself in all seriousnjss in reading the future from the manner in -which- a 'dozen or so of chickens pioked up the, grains of wheat that- were Ihrowri\,to themj we may smile at the scrupulous care with which -.Dr/ Dee and 1 Archbishop Laud noted down their dreams and built elaborate prognostications upon them, or- at the folly of Lojis XI., or Wallensitein, or the leaders of the Puritan Parliament and army shutting themselves up "with their official astrologers and anxiously scanning the face •of ihe heavens or loo 1 - ing for portents upon the earth. We ha\e, thank h aven, nao7ed in many respects far from the spirit of those men ani tinies. A great gulf separates us from them along many social and other lines. But in the matter of superstitious, regard -ifbr vain and vulgar and tri'.ial means of spyinc out "the future; the century of radium and the ethergram equals— nay, probably su.rpasses,-its predecessors. Here - the twentieth century and the pagan days clasp hands. With Extravagances of divination that mark our day, it ill. becomes it to cast stones at the follies of a past that " .was pagan or ' dark ' O r medieval. - ■