href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@46480@[email protected]#X" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">X. CALVARY
XI. THE GHASTLY PRIEST
XII. SOUTH AFRICAN RELIGION
XIII. CUP AND RING: AN OLD PROBLEM SOLVED
XIV. FIRST-FRUITS AND TABOOS
XV. WALKING THROUGH FIRE

APPENDICES

A. MR. TYLOR'S THEORY OF BORROWING
B. THE MARTYRDOM OF DASIUS
C. THE RIDE OF THE BEARDLESS ONE

INDEX

I

SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION

We all know what we mean by science; science is 'organised common sense.' Her aim is the acquisition of reasoned and orderly knowledge. Presented with a collection of verified facts, it is the part of science to reduce them to order, and to account for their existence in accordance with her recognised theory of things. If the facts cannot be fitted into the theory, it must be expanded or altered; for we must admit that, if the facts are verified, there is need for change and expansion in the theory. The 'colligation' of facts demands hypotheses, and these may not, at the moment of their construction, be verifiable. The deflections of a planet from its apparently normal course may be accounted for by the hypothesis of the attraction of another heavenly body not yet discovered. The hypothesis is legitimate, for such bodies are known to exist, and to produce such effects. When the body is discovered, the hypothesis becomes a certainty. On the other hand, the hypothesis that some capricious and conscious agency pushed the planet into deflections would be illegitimate, for the existence of such a freakish agency is not demonstrated. Our hypotheses then must be consistent with our actual knowledge of nature and of human nature, and our conjectured causes must be adequate to the production of the effects. Thus, science gradually acquires and organises new regions of knowledge.

Superstition is a word of much less definite meaning. When we call a man 'superstitious,' we usually mean that evidence which satisfies him does not satisfy us. We see examples daily of the dependence of belief on bias. One man believes a story about cruelties committed by our adversaries; another, disbelieving the tale, credits a narrative about the misconduct of our own party. Probably the evidence in neither case would satisfy the historian, or be accepted by a jury. A man in a tavern tells another how the Boers, retreating from a position, buried their own wounded. 'I don't believe that,' says the other. 'Then you are a pro-Boer.'

The sceptic reasoned from his general knowledge of human nature. The believer reasoned from his own prejudiced and mythopoeic conception of people whom he disliked. If the question had been one of religion the believer might be called superstitious; the sceptic might be called scientific, if he was ready to yield his doubts to the evidence of capable observers of the alleged fact.

Superstition, like science, has her hypotheses, and, like science, she reasons from experience. But her experience is usually fantastic, unreal, or if real capable of explanation by causes other than those alleged by superstition. A man comes in at night, and says he has seen a ghost in white. That is merely his hypothesis; the existence of ghosts in white is not demonstrated. You accompany him to the scene of the experience, and prove to him that he has seen a post, not a ghost. His experience was real, but was misinterpreted by dint of an hypothesis resting on no demonstrated fact of knowledge.

The hypotheses of superstition are familiar. Thus, an event has happened: say you have lost your button-hook. You presently hear of a death in your family. Ever afterwards you go anxiously about when you have lost a button-hook. You are confusing a casual sequence of facts with a causal connection of facts. Sequence in time is mistaken for sequence of what we commonly style cause and effect. In the same way, superstition cherishes the hypothesis that like affects like. Thus, the sun is round, and a ball of clay is round. Therefore, if an Australian native wishes to delay the course of the round sun in the heavens, he fixes a round ball of clay on the bough of a tree; or so books on anthropology tell us. Acting on the hypothesis that like affects like, a man makes a clay or waxen image of an enemy, and sticks it full of pins or thorns. He expects his enemy to suffer agony in consequence, and so powerful is 'suggestion' that, if the enemy knows about the image, he sometimes falls ill and dies. This experience corroborates the superstitious hypothesis, and so the experiment with the image is of world-wide diffusion. Everything is done, or attempted, on these lines by superstition. Men imitate the killing of foes or game, and expect, as a result, to kill them in war or in the chase. They mimic the gathering of clouds and the fall of rain, and expect rain to fall in consequence. They imitate the evolution of an edible grub from the larva, and expect grubs to multiply; and so on.

All this is quite rational, if you grant the hypotheses of superstition. Her practices are magic. We are later to discuss a theory that men had magic before they had religion, and only invented gods because they found that magic did not work. Still later they invented science, which is only magic with a legitimate hypothesis, using real, not fanciful, experience. In the long run magic and religion are to die out, perhaps, and science is to have the whole field to herself.

This may be a glorious though a remote prospect. But surely it is above all things needful that our science should be scientific. She must not blink facts, merely because they do not fit into her scheme or hypothesis of the nature of things, or of religion. She really must give as much prominence to the evidence which contradicts as to that which supports her theory in each instance. Not only must she not shut her eyes to this evidence, but she must diligently search for it, must seek for what Bacon calls instantice contradictorim, since, if these exist, the theory which ignores them is useless. If she advances an hypothesis, it must not be contradictory of the whole mass of human experience. If science finds that her hypothesis contradicts experience, she must seek for an hypothesis which is in accordance with experience, and, if that cannot be found, she must wait till it is found. Again, science must not pile one unverified hypothesis upon another unverified hypothesis till her edifice rivals the Tower of Babel. She must not make a conjecture on p. 35, and on p. 210