Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, April 1899: Volume LIV, No. 6, April 1899Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, April 1899: Volume LIV, No. 6, April 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
It is impossible on the evidence furnished by this study to give more
than hints at the probable reason for the preference here indicated.
But it is worth while to glance backward to earlier conditions, when
the scientific attitude toward all the facts of life and mind was far
more subordinated to supernatural interpretations than it is to-day.
In this way we may catch a thread which still binds us to habits
formed in the indefinite past.
The Greeks considered the even numbers as representative of the
feminine principle, and as belonging and applying to things
terrestrial. To them the odd numbers were endowed with a masculine
virtue, which in time was strengthened into supernatural and celestial
qualities. The same belief was prevalent among the Chinese. With them
even numbers were connected with earthly things, partaking of the
feminine principle of Yang. Odd numbers were looked upon as proceeding
out of the divine and endued with the masculine principle. Thirty was
called the number of earth, because it was made up by the addition of
the even numbers 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. On the other hand, 25, the sum of
the five odd numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9, was called the number of
heaven.
It is generally true that, as lower peoples developed the need of
numbers and the power to use them, certain of these numbers came to be
surrounded with a superstitious importance and endued with certain
qualities which led at once to numerical preferences more or less
dominant in all their thinking connected with numbers.
It would certainly be unjustifiable to conclude from the evidence at
hand that the preferences shown in the guesses under consideration are
directly traceable to some such superstition; and yet one can scarcely
prevent himself from linking them vaguely together. Especially is this
true when some consideration is given to a probable connecting link as
shown in our modern superstitious notions. I have found through a
recent study of these superstitions that where numbers are introduced,
the odd are used to the almost complete exclusion of the even. For
example, I have collected and tabulated a series of more than sixty
different superstitions using odd numbers, and have found but four
making use of the even. Besides these specific examples there are many
more which in some form or another express the belief that odd numbers
have some vital relation with luck both good and bad.
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