Year: 1879

From the Cornhill Magazine


Bad luck" is indissolublv connected


with the evil eve; people who have bad


luck either look with or are looked al


by malignant eyes. The train OF


thought may have been the following


More than once it has happened that


two girls, one as good as the other-sis-


tiers we may suppose-have married two


men, two brothers, equally desirable
| Both couples seem TO be at par. But.
| after while, one seems to have pros
pered more than the other BY degrees


the difference increases; and after ten.
| twenty, thirty years, the one household
VIII be IN easy, and the other in
Strengthened circumstances, nobody
knowing exactly why. Now, mathe-
MATES teach that multiplicity ofcauses,
each impereeptible in itself, will become
apparent when they collect in one group,
or operate though a lengthed period !:


but simple-minded folks, not entering
INTO these delicate considerations, con
dense IN one single agent, which they
call ''luck, the total of all these causes.
themselves infinitely small which are
dlScernible only by their effoots and in
the long run. And the idea arose that
the universe Is going up and down by a
sea-saw motion, that a grand duralism
reigns supreme; that men are lucky
or unlueky according to the hour
of their birth, according as the moon is
growing or waning, as the sun aScends
or descends the sky, stands at the zenith
or the nadir, as the planets are occult
ated or as they conjugate with certain
consultations. Life is supposed TO
stream from the East and flow toward
the West, the seat of death. Sick peo-
pie in Ceylon are still turned with their
heads to the East as long as there is anv
hope of recovery; but when the fatal
termination approaches the head is
turned To the West Now, of the two
sisters above, she who had the good luck
was supposed, is still supposed in many
countries, to have had the good look Of
star. Each star is believed to be the
seat of godhead or of a peculiar ge-
MUS. Even now they are said by Rus
sian peasants to be the eyes, and by the
Australians and Polynesians to be the
souls, of dead men. 1t was natural to
suppose that the souls which are brought
back to earth for being born again,





place in the armament, take from that
very star the fire of life which is re-
kindled in them; and that, by the virtue
of their common origin, these specks of
a same lire are possessed with similar
virtues. Thus, the same principle is
supposed to pervade the stars and the
souls; the same law to preside over all
destinies, celestial and terrestrial. The
law is that of Circulus; death equiposes
life, and increase matches decrease.
The legends tell US of two gates of Ha-
des by which the souls enter this world
one is the gate of good chance, the other
of bad chance; and the two tanks in
which they are dipped, one is filled
with the water of strength, the other
with the water of debility. All men,
all animals, and even the material
things are acted upon by auspicious or
lnausplclous circumstances; their lot
falls in the sunshine or in the shade
There is not an object, organic or inor-
ganic, which is not marked with either
the algebraic plus sign or minus sign;
everybody, everything, is reckoned as
being in the universe a positive or a
negative quantity. Such being the
general scheme of the world, primitive
classifcations could not help to make
many arbitrary and contradictory dis
tributions, which in the course of time
their successors entangled strangely.
Hence an embodiment which to the un-
initiated appears inextricable; and the
moral sense developing itself by and by,
the great question as to the difference
between good and bad made the con-
fusion worse confounded. Indeed, it
has not been an easy thing for mankind
to Disseminate between prosperity and
morality, between success and virtue,
comfort and goodness, riches and prob
ity, might and right, physiologic virility
and moral virtue, All these incerti-
tudes have left their traces in magic,
the oldest record Of human thought.