Mythology

8 the perforation of the stone is said to possess even more virtues than the stone itself, and when Mr Rockefeller wishes to confer a particular favour upon someone, he gives him a small piece of this ribbon. But the great reason why superstitions persist is because they are, in part, doctrines about matters concerning which we as yet know little. Mental and occult influences are the staple commodities of most of those practices which modern science condemns as meaningless. Of these influences we are in partial ignorance, and until that ignorance is dissolved we shall always have the crystal gazer and the clairvoyant in our midst, despite the activity of the police. True, some of the remarkable coincidences related in solemn tones, amid breathless silence, are receiving their quietus at the hands of the expert in hypnotism and auto-suggestion; from this standpoint we may eventually be able to justify some of the stories about charms and amulets, as well as to develop a useful moral agency. But in regard to occult powers, especially what is known as black magic, we are still in darkness, mainly because those who are competent to investigate laugh the problems out of court as not worthy of attention. This is a pity, because, if there are any superstitions at all which have an origin that can be tested here and now, it is the group belonging to the occult section, dealing with the things in heaven and earth not dreamed of in our philosophy. In view of such discoveries as have been made by Lombroso and others, not so much in magic as in mental forces,it would appear very desirable to initiate enquiries into the so-called evil side of man s powers, the persistent tradition of which has come down from remote antiquity, and surrounding which are strange superstitions and nightmare stories. It is because men of all classes have some modified belief in these vicious powers that a kind of half probability is accorded to beliefs of a more innocent hue. To read the narratives of modern travellers in the East, men with no axe to grind, and not suffering from imagination, is to have one s curiosity awakened to the highest degree; for they tell us of powers to which there is no corresponding agency in the West. If early races in the same territory possessed the same powers, it is easy to understand the tenacity with which they held on to the beliefs in the supernatural as they understood it. Reviewing the whole subject, without prejudice, it seems to the present writer that the right attitude of mind towards the superstitions that are still operative is not one of mere condemnation, or lofty indifference; it should be one of sympathetic inquiry, for the psychological and scientific data available are of the highest interest; and just as astronomy arose out of astrology and chemistry out of alchemy, so from the occult world we may some day attain developments in mental science, equally distinctive and equally useful in the service of the race.

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