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o the story runs) a Captain Friday to command her; and lastly, she sailed on a Friday. But the superstition was not destroyed, for the ship never returned to port, nor was the manner of her destruction known. Other instances of the kind might be cited. Thus a feeling is entertained by many persons not otherwise superstitious, that bad luck will follow any willful attempt to run counter to a superstition.
It is somewhat singular that attempts to correct even the more degrading forms of superstition have often been as unsuccessful as those attempts which may perhaps not unfairly be called tempting fate. Let me be understood. To refer to the example already given, it is a manifest absurdity to suppose that the sailing of a ship on a Friday is unfortunate; and it would be a piece of egregious folly to consider such a superstition when one has occasion to take a journey. But the case is different when any one undertakes to prove that the superstition is an absurdity; simply because he must assume in the first instance that he will succeed, a result which cannot be certain; and such confidence, apart from all question of superstition, is a mistake. In fact, a person so acting errs in the very same way as those whom he wishes to correct; they refrain from a, certain act because of a blind fear of bad luck, and he proceeds to the act with an equally blind belief in good luck.
But one cannot recognize the same objection in the
ease of a person who tries to correct some superstition by actions not involving any tempting of fortune. Yet it has not infrequently happened that such actions have resulted in confirming the superstition. The following instance may be cited. An old woman came to Flamsteed, the first Astronomer-Royal, to ask him whereabouts a certain bundle of linen might be, which she had lost. Flamsteed determined to show the folly of that belief in astrology which had led her to Greenwich Observatory (under some misapprehension as to the duties of an Astronomer-Royal). He ' drew a circle, put a square into it, and gravely pointed out a ditch, near her cottage, in which he said it would be found.' He then waited until she should come back disappointed, and in a fit frame of mind to receive the rebuke he intended for her; but ' she came back in great delight, with the bundle in her hand, found in the very place.'
In connection with this story, though bearing rather on over-hasty scientific theorizing than on ordinary superstitions, I quote the following story from De Morgan's' Budget of Paradoxes' :--' The late Baron Zach received a letter from Pons, a successful finder of comets, complaining that for a certain period he had found no comets, though he had searched diligently. Zach, a man of much sly humor, told him that no spots had been seen on the sun for about the same time--which was true--and assured him that when the spots came back the comets would come with them. Some time after he got a letter from Pons, who informed him 02
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