that they start out by regarding as
impossible. And Aunt Charlotte was a very apposite specimen of the
class.

"I'll not scoff, at anyrate, Austin," she said at last. "I cannot
forget--and I never will forget--that it's to you I owe it that I am
sitting here this moment. Tell me what moved you to act as you did
this morning. I may not share your belief, but I will not ridicule it.
Of that you may rest assured."

"It is all simple enough," he said. "I had a horrid dream just before
I woke--nothing circumstantial, but a general sense of the most awful
confusion, and disaster, and terror. I fancy it was that that woke me.
And as I was opening my eyes, a voice said to me quite distinctly, as
distinctly as I am speaking now, '_Keep auntie at home this morning._'
The words dinned themselves into my ears all the time I was dressing,
and then I acted upon them as you know. But what would have been the
good of telling you? None whatever. So I tried persuasion, and when
that failed I simply locked you in."

Now there are two sorts of superstition, each of which is the very
antithesis of the other. The victim of one believes all kinds of
absurdities blindfold, oblivious of evidence or causality. The
upsetting of a salt-cellar or the fall of a mirror is to him a
harbinger of disaster, entirely irrespective of any possible
connection between the cause and the effect. A bit of stalk floating
on his tea presages an unlooked-for visitor, and the guttering of a
candle is a sign of impending death. All this he believes firmly, and
acts upon, although he would candidly acknowledge his inability to
explain the principle supposed to underlie the sequence between the
omen and its fulfilment. It is the irrationality of the belief that
constitutes its superstitious character, the contented acquiescence in
some inconceivable and impossible law, whether physical or
metaphysical, in virtue of which the predicted event is expected to
follow the wholly unrelated augury. The other sort of superstition is
that of which, as we have seen, Aunt Charlotte was an exemplification.
Here, again, there is a splendid disregard of evidence, testimony, and
causal laws. But it takes the form of scepticism, and a scepticism so
blindly partial as to sink into the most abject credulity. The wildest
sophistries are dragged in to account for an unfamiliar happening, and
scientific students are accused, now of idiocy, now of fraud, rather
than the fact should be c