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Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society by Walter Bagehot
page 102 of 176 (57%)
knowledge, too much organised common sense to prolong or cherish
such ideas; they are ashamed of entertaining them, though,
nevertheless, they cannot entirely drive them out of their minds.
But child gamblers--a number of little boys set to play loo-are just
in the position of savages, for their fancy is still impressible,
and they have not as yet been thoroughly subjected to the confuting
experience of the real world and child gamblers have idolatries--at
least I know that years ago a set of boy loo-players, of whom I was
one, had considerable faith in a certain 'pretty fish' which was
larger and more nicely made than the other fish we had. We gave the
best evidence of our belief in its power to 'bring luck;' we fought
for it (if our elders were out of the way); we offered to buy it
with many other fish from the envied holder, and I am sure I have
often cried bitterly if the chance of the game took it away from me.
Persons who stand up for the dignity of philosophy, if any such
there still are, will say that I ought not to mention this, because
it seems trivial; but the more modest spirit of modern thought
plainly teaches, if it teaches anything, the cardinal value of
occasional little facts. I do not hesitate to say that many learned
and elaborate explanations of the totem--the 'clan' deity--the beast
or bird which in some supernatural way, attends to the clan and
watches over it--do not seem to me to be nearly akin to the reality
as it works and lives among--the lower races as the 'pretty fish' of
my early boyhood. And very naturally so, for a grave philosopher is
separated from primitive thought by the whole length of human
culture; but an impressible child is as near to, and its thoughts
are as much like, that thought as anything can now be.

The worst of these superstitions is that they are easy to make and
hard to destroy. A single run of luck has made the fortune of many a
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