Confuted and ridiculed as these opinions have been, in later days, the seeds of them are still widely diffused, and at times attempt to spring up in all their earlier excess. In the year 1832, crowds of men, women, and children flocked to the village of Waltham, a few miles from Boston, to see a ghost which was said to make its appearance towards midnight, walking to and fro in a turf meadow, declaring itself, in unearthly tones, to be the spirit of a murdered man, whose bones lay in a mud hole near by. The excitement spread many miles around, and hundreds from the city and neighboring towns hied to the spot, with eyes agape, to behold the solemn visitor from the spirit world. And such was the credulity inspired in the minds of the people, that a clergyman in the vicinity declared from his pulpit, on the following Sabbath, that the awful crime of murder had been revealed by the spirit which had appeared in Waltham! Such is the _excitability_ of the mind, and its tendency (notwithstanding the light that has been scattered abroad) to give credence to all the vagaries and nonsense of the darker ages. CHAPTER I. THE ORIGIN OF POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. Ignorance of correct reasoning has undoubtedly given rise to many superstitions. Inductive reasoning teaches us to infer general conclusions from particular facts which have come under our observation. This definition may be illustrated by an example. You know that water boils on the application of a certain degree of heat. You have seen this experiment tried many times without a single failure. You therefore conclude that water will always boil on the application of this degree of heat, although you have seen it applied but to a small portion of the water in creation. Thus you draw this _general_ conclusion from the few _particular_ facts which you have witnessed. But had you noticed several failures in the trial, your conclusions would have been doubtful. And if the experiment had failed ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, you would have adopted an opposite conclusion. You would have said that the application of the specified degree of heat would not boil water. In this way, logical reasoning leads to the discovery of truth. Now, apply this principle of sound reasoning to the whole mass of pretended _signs_. Let me select one to show you the absurdity of believing in any. It is commonly reported that the breaking of a looking glass betokens death to some member of the family. This sign probably originated in the following manner: A death happened to follow the breaking of a mirror. Some ignorant person immediately concluded that the breaking of the glass was a sure sign of death. The story soon spread among credulous people, and at length was handed down from generation to generation as an established truth. But you readily perceive the absurdity of forming this _general_ conclusion from _one_ or a _few_ particular facts. We all know that death does not