Superstition (n.) is always lying just below the surface of even the most tough-minded individuals, and it is precisely those who most fight against it who are the first to succumb to its suggestive effects.
Superstition (n.) is not as senseless as it seems. In fact it often represents a symptom rather than a sign. When an ancient roman stumbled on the threshold as he left the house, he gave up his plans for the day. But, in truth, when one is not in full control of oneself, one's bodily movements may be under a certain constraint... one's attention is easily distracted... one is somewhat absent-minded. As a result one knocks against something, stumbles, lets something fall, or forgets something.
Superstition (n.) can be intellectual: a partial truth that usurps religion's place and takes on religion's absoluteness.
Superstition (n.) is no fair name for initiation symbols: dismissing them as unscientific superstition is as intelligent as calling a cholera epidemic merely an unhygienic infectious disease.
Superstition (n.) lies just below the surface of the most tough-minded — and those who fight it hardest are the first to succumb to its suggestion.
Superstition (n.) is something the modern man flatly denies when asked point-blank about ghosts and spells — yet secretly he believes it as much as any jungle-dweller.
Superstition (n.) is the primitive's theory of witchcraft and spirits — more sensible than the modern man who blames his nervous stomach on his diet.
Superstition (n.) is not born of thin air but of experience: unusual events really do cluster, and on a day that starts ill-omened, the primitive's caution is shrewdness.
Superstition (n.) has not diminished by a single item since antiquity — a thousand times more horoscopes are cast today than three hundred years ago.
Superstition (n.) is newly feared, and that fear may itself descend from primitive magic and the fear of ghosts.
Superstition (n.) is what a rite degenerates into when the spirit of the age changes, through a foreign civilization or new knowledge, and the archetypal ideas behind it lose their force, as with the gods of Egypt, Greece and Rome.
Superstition (n.) is the inferior man in us, nervous about certain dates and bad dreams while the conscious hero laughs him off.