On the Benefits of Superstition

On the Benefits of Superstition

Agnes Repplier opens "The Benefits of Superstition" by citing Mr. Kinglake's sarcasm about the English press leveling all citizens up to equal skepticism, a remark Mr. Ruskin quotes with unease, since Ruskin mourns the modern preference for steam-cars and machinery over green fields and "accomplished pictures," and recoils from any scheme to correct old superstitions by scientific research. Repplier proposes instead the humility of Don Bernal Dias del Castillo, the soldier-chronicler of Cortés's Historia Verdadera, who did not himself see the vision of Saint Iago on his white charger during battle — he saw only the cavalier Francisco de Morla on a chestnut horse — yet blamed his own unworthiness rather than doubt his comrades. She compares this to Peter Walker, who believed in the ghostly armies said to have crossed the Clyde in 1686 though he saw nothing himself, and to Sir Walter Scott, who late in life admitted his lifelong tendency toward belief in the supernatural, a tendency Repplier links to Mr. Pater's theory that happiness comes from multiplying sensations. She argues superstition's benefits fall into several categories. First, beauty: the elfin folk, swan-maidens, the mara, Melusina, Undine, the nixie, and the mermaid all enriched imagination with images of loveliness. Second, the pleasurable sensation of fear, illustrated by Captain Forsyth's encounter with a tigress in the jungle, and by children's "fearful joy" in stolen mischief (quoting Gray) and in listening to uncanny legends, as in Mr. Charles Gregory's picture "Tales and Wonders" — contrasted with modern children who scorn Santa Claus and fairy tales, like the child who echoes Betsey Prig's "I don't believe there's no sich a person." Repplier invokes Mr. Ruskin's own fairy-tale upbringing and imagines a Breton peasant's terror crossing the forest of Broceliande, guarded by a silver medal and ash wood from a wise woman, and the legend of Kourigan foretelling his doom, with Pierrot the charcoal-burner eventually courting his widow. Third, she addresses the charge that superstition breeds cruelty, citing Mr. Besant, Mr. Andrew Lang, and Mr. Pater as defenders of its gentler uses, and giving examples of superstition-bred charity: the Greek rustic sparing the water-newt as the transformed Ascalaphus, the housewife feeding a wolf that might be her bewitched husband, and the West Indian negress feeding invading ants chicken-soup. She links this to superstition's role in courtesy and euphemism — the Eumenides, the Scotch "good man" for the devil, the Dyak's "the chief" for small-pox, the East Indian's "lord" for the tiger, and the Laplander's "fur-clad one" for the white bear. Fourth, superstition excused failure and explained success without envy or shame: Cornish miners crediting knackers for rich ore veins, farmers' good crops blamed on witchcraft (citing Pliny's tale of Caius Furius Cresinus), and industrious women credited to pixies turning their wheels at night. Even clergy benefited, as when the Reverend Lucas Jacobson Debes of Thorshaven blamed the biergen-trold for his dwindling congregation. She dwells at length on the Reverend Robert Kirke of Aberfoyle, author of a treatise on the "Subterranean and for the most part Invisible People," said to have been carried off by the fairies he described and imprisoned beneath the dun-shi, a fate an attempted rescue by Grahame of Duchray failed to reverse. Repplier surveys witchcraft's darker history: the Warbois witches condemned on the Throgmorton children's testimony and Sir Samuel Cromwell's resulting endowed lecture on witchcraft; believers including Baxter, Addison, and Bacon; and noble families such as Luxembourg, Rohan, Sassenaye, and the Emperor Henry VII. claiming descent from Melusina, alongside Godfrey de Bouillon's descent from Helias, the Knight of the Swan (Lohengrin), and the crests of the Fantome and Dobie families. She contrasts national variations in elfin character — the Keltic ourisk, English brownie, Scottish bogle, and Dutch Hudikin, who foretold the murder of James I. of Scotland — and recounts Isobel Gowdie's confession of firing a magic dart at the Laird of the Park and being cuffed by Bessie Hay for missing. She traces the belief in evil spells from Thessalian magic to Louisiana Voodoo, through victims like Janet Douglas, Lady Glamis, and Jeanne d'Arc, and mythic figures such as Acteon, Circe's captives, Björn and King Hring, the Swans of Lir, the loup-garou, the oborot, Merlin, and Raknar. She describes Mr. Newton's 1857 discovery at Cnidos of leaden curse-tablets addressed to Demeter and Persephone, cataloguing petty grievances such as stolen bracelets and unreturned garments. Finally, Repplier contrasts Mr. Baring-Gould's sympathetic, credulous style of retelling myths (his protest against reducing William Tell to a solar allegory, his tale of Cornishmen's tails, his treatment of the were-wolves Jacques Roulet and Jean Grenier, and Van Hahn's tale of the freemason pursued by a were-wolf) with Mr. John Fiske's colder, more scientific "arrested development" explanations, which she finds less companionable than the peasant's fear itself. She closes by quoting Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes on the "bullying" quality of scientific fact, invoking Lamb's plea not to "set down our ancestors in the gross for fools," and mourning the lost wonderlands of Prester John, the Terrestrial Paradise's Well of Youth, and the Fortunate Isles, closing with verses lamenting that "Wonderland forever is gone past."

By Agnes Repplier · First published 1910 · Genre: Essay, Cultural Criticism, Satire · 6,976 words

First lines

"We in England," says Mr. Kinglake, "are scarcely sufficiently conscious of the great debt we owe to the wise and watchful press which presides over the formation of our opinions, and which brings about this splendid result, namely, that in matters of belief the humblest of us are lifted up to the level of the most sagacious; so that really a simple cornet in the Blues is no more likely to entertain a foolish belief in ghosts, or witchcraft, or any other supernatural topic, than the Lord High Chancellor or the leader of the House of Commons. " This delicate sarcasm, delivered with all the author's habitual serenity of mind, is quoted by Mr. Ruskin in his Art of England; assentingly, indeed, but with a half-concealed dismay that any one could find it in his heart to be funny upon such a distressing subject. When he, Mr. Ruskin, hurls his satiric shafts against the spirit of modern skepticism, the points are touched with caustic, and betray a deep impatience darkening quickly into wrath. Is it not bad enough that we ride in steam-cars instead of post-chaises, live amid brick houses instead of green fields, and pass by some of the "most accomplished pictures in the world" to stare gaping at the last new machine, with its network of slow-revolving, wicked-looking wheels? If, in addition to these too prominent faults, we are going to frown down the old appealing superstitions, and threaten them, like naughty children, with the corrective discipline of scientific research, he very properly turns his back upon us forever, and distinctly says he has no further message for our ears.

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cultural studies · belief systems · irrationality · mythology · psychology · tradition · human behavior · critical thinking · social commentary · investigation · folklore · modernity

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