For example,--to recur
to an illustration already cited in a previous paper,--it is
still believed here and there by some venerable granny that it
is wicked to kill robins; but he who should attribute the
belief to the old granny's refined sympathy with all sentient
existence, would be making one of the blunders which are
always committed by those who reason a priori about historical
matters without following the historical method. At an earlier
date the superstition existed in the shape of a belief that
the killing of a robin portends some calamity; in a still
earlier form the calamity is specified as death; and again,
still earlier, as death by lightning. Another step backward
reveals that the dread sanctity of the robin is owing to the
fact that he is the bird of Thor, the lightning god; and
finally we reach that primitive stage of philosophizing in
which the lightning is explained as a red bird dropping from
its beak a worm which cleaveth the rocks. Again, the belief
that some harm is sure to come to him who saves the life of a
drowning man, is unintelligible until it is regarded as a case
of survival in culture. In the older form of the superstition
it is held that the rescuer will sooner or later be drowned
himself; and thus we pass to the fetichistic interpretation of
drowning as the seizing of the unfortunate person by the
water-spirit or nixy, who is naturally angry at being deprived
of his victim, and henceforth bears a special grudge against
the bold mortal who has thus dared to frustrate him.
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