And what happens when a current of credulity sweeps a civilized land? A rank growth of superstition springs up in its wake, and men turn back with startling ease to the least desirable delusions of the Middle Ages. Apparitions have become the order of the day. Sick people are proffered ghostly prescriptions for their maladies. Rectors have been asked by their parishioners for "charms" to ward off misfortune. Men whom we deemed sane write that a wooden table applauded the music which pleased it, or "fluttered like a wounded bird, and dropped gently to the door." Young women devote themselves to automatic writing, and reel off spectral literature of surpassing fatuity. It was testified in a New Jersey court that a man had bought some farm land because the spirit of a young girl (Feda must have crossed the sea) had revealed the existence of treasure—two million dollars worth of treasure—buried beneath the soil. Two gypsy women were arraigned before a Brooklyn magistrate on a charge of stealing the money they had been commissioned to "bless." And all this in the twentieth century, with the experience of the ages to enlighten us.
Moreover, twentieth century superstition is far more dangerous than was eleventh century superstition, because we are less fitted, mentally and physically, to face it. In the Middle Ages, men and women had no nerves. War, pestilence, violence, the sacking of towns, the savage cruelty of the law, the fate of unfortunates who languished in dungeons or died on the rack, failed to impair the vitality of the race, or dim its love for life. Men took their superstitions, as they took other picturesque and terrifying conditions, without more thinking than was necessary. But we, nervous, fretful, introspective, morbidly sensitive, imperfectly educated and ignorant of our ignorance, how shall we meet this tide of occultism, and keep our sanity and self-control? The horrors of the War destroyed our serenity, the sorrows of the War blighted our happiness. We believed vaguely in the goodness of mankind; and the ferocity of Germany's campaign shook the foundations of this belief. We have discovered that nothing is more possible than the thing we called morally impossible. What wonder that with the downfall of familiar convictions, the cession of familiar thoughts, there shall come this onrush of superstition which is not the less hurtful for its folly.
