, of whom I was one, had considerable faith in a certain
'pretty fish' which was larger and more nicely made than the other fish
we had. We gave the best evidence of our belief in its power to 'bring
luck;' we fought for it (if our elders were out of the way); we offered
to buy it with many other fish from the envied holder, and I am sure I
have often cried bitterly if the chance of the game took it away from
me. Persons who stand up for the dignity of philosophy, if any such
there still are, will say that I ought not to mention this, because it
seems trivial; but the more modest spirit of modern thought plainly
teaches, if it teaches anything, the cardinal value of occasional
little facts. I do not hesitate to say that many learned and elaborate
explanations of the totem--the 'clan' deity--the beast or bird which in
some supernatural way, attends to the clan and watches over it--do not
seem to me to be nearly akin to the reality as it works and lives
among--the lower races as the 'pretty fish' of my early boyhood. And
very naturally so, for a grave philosopher is separated from primitive
thought by the whole length of human culture; but an impressible child
is as near to, and its thoughts are as much like, that thought as
anything can now be.

The worst of these superstitions is that they are easy to make and hard
to destroy. A single run of luck has made the fortune of many a charm
and many idols. I doubt if even a single run of luck be necessary. I am
sure that if an elder boy said that 'the pretty fish was lucky--of
course it was,' all the lesser boys would believe it, and in a week it
would be an accepted idol. And I suspect the Nestor of a savage
tribe--the aged repository of guiding experience--would have an equal
power of creating superstitions. But if once created they are most
difficult to eradicate. If any one said that the amulet was of certain
efficacy--that it always acted whenever it was applied--it would of
course be very easy to disprove; but no one ever said that the 'pretty
fish' always brought luck; it was only said that it did so on the
whole, and that if you had it you were more likely to be lucky than if
you were without it. But it requires a long table of statistics of the
results of games to disprove this thoroughly; and by the time people
can make tables they are already above such beliefs, and do not need to
have them disproved. Nor in many cases where omens or amulets are used
would such tabl