rived from the occupation of the man to whom the name was first given. For instance, the Stuarts at one time had an ancestor who was a steward. The Marshalls had an ancestor who was a marshal. The people whose surname is Cleaver or Claver have for their forefather the clavinger, or keeper of the keys.

Then, of course, there are the many place or country names. A Scotchman coming to live in England would be known as the Scot. Hence, in time, the surname Scott applied to him and to his family. Wallace originally indicated a Welshman-he who came from Wales. In early times, newcomers to the golden land called America discarded the old, hard-to-pronounce names which they brought with them and adopted such names as Strange, Newcomb or Newcome, Travellers or Travers, etc.

Every name has its own story, and every story its different, fascinating. One picks up the thread of a name and follows it back over the centuries to its source. Sometimes there is a knight at the end of the thread, holding his banner high. Sometimes there is a wanderer at the end of the thread, crossing a great, wide ocean to reach an unknown land. Always there is some one person who has given the name it significance.

To-day cannot forget yesterday, for the one is linked eternally to the other.

CHAPTER XIX

POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS WITH SOME CURIOUS CUSTOMS
AND MANY MISCELLANEOUS ORIGINS

The savage is very close to us indeed, both in his physical and mental make-up and in the forms of his social life. Tribal society is virtually delayed civilization, and the savages are a sort of contemporaneous ancestry. -WILLIAM I. THOMAS.

Few of us take the pains to study the origin of our cherished convictions; indeed, we have a natural repugnance to so doing. We like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to them.

Ο

JAMES H. ROBINSON.

THE BIRTH OF SUPERSTITION

NE of the oldest of human instincts is fear. Man was cradled in a world of bewildering hostility, and he saw danger lurking everywhere around him. Smouldering craters belched fire before his frightened gaze. The thunder crashed in terrific bolts above his head. The night sky winked at him with thousands of silver eyes. And man was afraid. In this primitive chaos his very shadow seemed a grim spectre that stalked by his side. The whole world was peopled with fiendish creatures of his own imagining.

For man felt long before he reasoned. The thunder sent him cowering to the fartherst corner of the cave. The stars filled him with a vague unease. The gnarled, twisted trees in the forest, and the grotesque, sun-patterned shadows that they cast upon the ground bewildered and terrified him. He could not explain them; he did not know what they were. Be he felt weak, and powerless-and

afraid.

L

Primitive man groped about in a world of bewildering hostility. The very shadows trembling upon the ground filled him with terror.

Out of this fear came the germ called superstition. The germ grew, and multiplied, and spread. It eased the fearstricken primitive mind. It founded the first crude religions. It moulded mass thought into strange ways of custom and belief. It swept out across the whole of humanity, seeped through the barriers of civilization, found its way even into advanced thought and advanced religions, became a definite part of man's personality.

William J. Fielding says: "Before we have the power to love or hate or comprehend, we are able to be afraid." The observant notice that the first emotions a child has are those of fear and surprise. And so it was with man in early life. What he did not understand he feared-and there was much that he did not understand (see pp. 21-22).

Thousands upon thousands of magic practices and superstitions have been evolved since the first dawn of superstitious fear, all with the idea of warding off danger, of propitiating angry deities, of inviting better fortune. Like a brand of fire these magic practices and superstitions sent sparks in all directions, and the sparks were fanned into flame by fear and ignorance. Thus did superstition spread quickly. It was as contagious as any infectious disease. Witch doctors, medicine men, magicians, sorcerers rode in upon the crest of the superstitious wave to begin their march across the ages.

These witches and wizards, medicine men and magicians made their appearance wherever the belief in magic prevailed. They were regarded with awe and fearful respect, and the general notion was that they were in direct communication with the spirit world. Therefore, it was believed that they could foretell the future or read the past; that they could prevent thunderstorms or invite rain in time of drought; that they could propitiate angry deities and so save the people from impending punishment. Hence, the witch doctor received gifts-the best that the tribe could procure. And as a consequence, everyone who was able to do so posed as a witch doctor,

Magic practices were divided into two definite kindsblack magic and white magic. The term "black magic" applied to all those practices which caused evil and harm to others, as, for instance, the age-old practice of burning a wooden image of an enemy for the purpose of causing his destruction-still practiced in Africa and among other savage peoples. The practices termed "white magic" were intended to combat the influences of black magic, achieving good instead of evil. A primitive people would use black magic against the elements, against their enemies. The same people would use white magic to prevent illness, thunderstorms, droughts, and other evils.

Out of these early forms of magic grew many curious customs. In time of illness the medicine man applied his lips to the part that pained and "sucked out the evil." It is still a natural instinct to suck a bruised finger-still a nursery remedy to "kiss it and make it well" (see p. 23). The rain-maker also made his appearance; charm words and spells were invented; talismans, amulets, and goodluck charms appeared in great profusion. Man entered upon an era of superstitious bondage from which he has never wholly escaped.

The Spread of Superstition.-Untold are the crimes that have been committed in the name of superstition! Untold are the victims who have died upon the sacrificial altar -human sacrifices to man-made gods and man-made superstitions! A trail of blood and blackness stretches out across the ages to show the path that superstition has taken.

Nor did Christianity dispel the ignorance and superstitious fears which held man in bondage. We find the fear of the "evil eye" still persisting. We find definite charms, and spells, and incantations for the purpose of warding off evil influences. Religion took one path; superstition another. Sometimes a curious superstitious notion found its way into the religious practices, was accepted, became a religious rite-and has survived.