SUPERSTITION. Like many words having a derogatory sense, "superstition" is often loosely and vaguely used, and is therefore not easy to define. To identify it, for example, with false belief or practice would be quite misleading. For in the first place, the field in which superstition is generally to be found, the magico-religious, is the very one in which the standard of truth and falsehood is most subjective and fluctuating; in the second, a custom or belief, religious or not, which is false may neverthe less be accepted at some times and places by men of enlightened intellect and conscience. To call a person superstitious, however, regularly implies more or less definite mental or moral deficiency.
Thus, we should describe a man as superstitious who in a modern European or American community seriously believed that to break a mirror brought bad luck; but the original holders of that or a similar belief were perfectly reasonable in their views, accord ing to their lights. Supposing that a shadow or reflection was in some sort a part of the soul, they naturally concluded that to break it, by breaking the substance upon which it was cast or reflected, was to injure the soul or life itself. They had merely been misled by a false inference. In like manner many savage customs and ideas, often described as superstitious by explorers or missionaries, turn out on investigation to be the product of quite sound reasoning, vitiated by the false premises on which it is based. To adhere irrationally to these premises after having their falsity clearly demonstrated might indeed be called superstition. The word in question being of Latin origin, light may be thrown upon it by the usage of a Latin author. Vergil, in a well-known passage (Aen. viii. 187), characterizes szzperstitio as uana (empty, groundless) and also as ueterum ignore deorum (having no knowl edge of ancient gods, i.e., of well-tried and long-established reli gious ideas). If we turn to the Greek equivalent literally "fear of superhuman powers," we find Theophrastos (Characteres, 28–[16]) ridiculing the not for holding polytheistic views nor for believing in omens, but for spending much time in the worship of obscure and foreign deities, and pay ing a ridiculous amount of attention to petty omens, such as a more sensible man would disregard.
We may now perhaps attempt to define superstition as the acceptance of beliefs or practices groundless in themselves and inconsistent with the degree of enlightenment reached by the com munity to which one belongs. It is clear that such a definition excludes, for instance, the mental attitude of one who, about the year A.D. 5o, or in the middle ages, believed in astrology, which was accepted and defended by many, though not all, intelligent and well-educated persons of the time ; it also excludes the action of a savage who adores what is to Europeans a ridiculous and non existent godling. But it includes, for example, those contempo
raries of Plato who let themselves be deceived by the lower prac titioners of Orphism, or by those moderns who appear seri ously to believe in mascots. Even so, a certain element of vague ness is unavoidable, since agreement is far from being reached as to what ideas, and consequently what practices, especially those having reference to things not obviously material, are false and unenlightened. A long list might be drawn up of things which some would regard as false and outworn, others as plausible or even certainly true ; it would range from theistic belief and religious observances of any sort to such matters as second sight and dowsing or water-finding. There still remain, however, a great number of ideas and actions which the consensus of educated modern opinion would regard as superstitious in the sense above defined. These remaining superstitions fall into two categories, survivals and accretions.
Survivals.—It is well known (see ANTHROPOLOGY, FOLKLORE) that a great many customs characteristic of a less advanced stage in social and intellectual evolution survive into higher stages, either as meaningless and fossilized customs or because a new significance and use has been found for them. Thus many per formances originally magical survive, more or less modified, as games for children or adults; a new use, the satisfaction of the play-instinct, has been found for them, but in their details they show, on investigation and comparison, traces of their original pur pose. Again, the very old Northern European custom, in origin probably a fertility-rite, of decorating the house with greens at Christmas, survives simply because it is a pretty and picturesque traditional usage. Some such customs have become matters of etiquette. The need being still felt for some kind of conventional gesture to express friendly feeling or desire for better acquaint ance, the old, probably magical, gesture of "handshaking" is still in use, and from childhood, we are taught to use the right, or lucky, hand for the purpose. The reason now given is that it is polite to use the right hand rather than the left ; here as in many other instances what is now polite was once magically good. Such things as these can hardly be called superstitions; certain customs being still found necessary in various spheres of modern life, and the old ones being in themselves inoffensive, it saves mental effort to retain them, although their original meaning was something quite foreign to our conceptions. But alongside of these some things survive which are useless or even obnoxious, on any theory of conduct, expressed or understood, save one involving some now exploded doctrine.