leads to an important remark. The term survival
expresses a truth, but only a part of the truth. Usages, habits,
opinions, which are classed as superstition, exhibit something more than
the unintelligent and unconscious persistence of habit. Folk-lore
survives, and popular practices continue, only so long as endures a
method of thinking corresponding to that in which these had their origin.
Individual customs may be preserved simply as a matter of thoughtless
habit; yet in general it is essential that these usages should be related
to conscious intellectual life; so soon as they cease to be so
explicable, they begin to pass into oblivion.

The chapters of this collection, therefore, will emphasize the doctrine
that the essential elements of human nature continue to exist, however
opposite may be the actions in which its operations are manifested. In
examining many of the maxims of conduct here set forth, we are able to
understand the motives in which they had their being; we perceive that
the inclination has not disappeared, however checked by mediation through
complex experience, and however counteracted by the weight of later
maxims. The examiner finds that he himself shares the mental state of the
superstitious person; if not, he can easily make an effort of imagination
which will enable him to comprehend its evident reasonableness. Thus,
while superstitions are properly designated as survivals, it will in many
cases be found that they represent a survival of ratiocination as well as
of action.

In some striking examples, also, it happens that the modern notion
indicates the continuance of conceptions more ancient than a mass of
connected ideas which have wholly perished. The former endure, because,
being simple in their nature, they represent a human impulse, an impulse
which animated the prehistoric ancestor as well as the modern descendant.
When this tendency ceases to operate, the plant suddenly withers. So it
is that an elimination of these beliefs, which formed the science of
remote antiquity, has taken place in our own century, which has worked a
change greater than fifty preceding generations, because it has been able
to introduce generalizations with which ancient notions and habits are
perceived no longer to coincide.

As illustrations of the psychologic value of the material, it may be
permitted to offer brief comments on the several sections.

In the usages of mothers and nurses, it is interesting to o