Buckle is right in pointing out the significant fact that superstition is found in any walk of life in which risk or danger predominates. Sailors are more superstitious than landsmen, while farmers and business people, especially gamblers and speculators, are more superstitious than industrial workers. Similarly Cumont is right in ascribing the superstitions of soldiers as due to risks and dangers of war. After the great world war one notices the rise of all sorts of superstitions. Superstitions and fear are close companions. A modern historian does not hesitate to declare that “Europe is held in hate, because the nations fear each other.... What sentiment has dug the ditch separating Russia from the rest of the world? It is fear. The states of Western Europe, which the Soviets regard as their persecutors, think themselves menaced in their turn by the Soviet republic.” The Great War was produced by self-preservation and fear. The world is still in the grip of the fear instinct. The Bible claims: Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The Latin poet declares: _Primus in orbe deos fecit timor_. The real state of things is: _Self and fear are the Lords of life_, individual and social. Bacon in his essay “On the Wisdom of the Ancients,” with his clear insight has stated the matter succinctly: “In the Panic terrors there is set forth a very wise doctrine; for by the nature of things _all living creatures are endued with a certain fear and dread_, the office of which is to preserve their life and existence, and to avoid or repel approaching mischief. But the same nature knows not how to keep just measure,--but together with salutary fears ever mingles vain and empty ones; insomuch that _all things (if one could see into the heart of them) are quite full of Panic terrors; human things most of all_; so infinitely tossed and troubled as they are with superstition (which is in truth nothing but a Panic terror), especially in seasons of hardship, anxiety, and adversity.” CHAPTER XXX THE HERD AND THE SUBCONSCIOUS Superstitious terrors are by no means confined to race; they are common to all races. For example, among the aborigines of Australia a native will die after the infliction of even the most superficial wound, if he is scared by the suggestion that the weapon which inflicted the wound has been sung over, and thus endowed with magical virtue. He simply lies down, refuses food, and pines away. Similarly among some of the Indian tribes of Brazil, if the medicine-man predicted the death of anyone who had offended him, “the wretch took to his hammock instantly in such full expectation of dying, that he would neither eat nor drink, and the prediction was effectually executed.”