power of the bag, and said, 'You see now what happens to
unbelievers.'

Now the present point as to these superstitions is their military
inexpediency. A nation which was moved by these superstitions as to
luck would be at the mercy of a nation, in other respects equal,
which, was not subject to them. In historical times, as we know, the
panic terror at eclipses has been the ruin of the armies which have
felt it; or has made them delay to do something necessary, or rush
to do something destructive. The necessity of consulting the
auspices, while it was sincerely practised and before it became a
trick for disguising foresight, was in classical history very
dangerous. And much worse is it with savages, whose life is one of
omens, who must always consult their sorcerers, who may be turned
this way or that by some chance accident, who, if they were
intellectually able to frame a consistent military policy--and some
savages in war see farther than in anything else--are yet liable to
be put out, distracted, confused, and turned aside in the carrying
out of it, because some event, really innocuous but to their minds
foreboding, arrests and frightens them. A religion full of omens is
a military misfortune, and will bring a nation to destruction if set
to fight with a nation at all equal otherwise, who had a religion
without omens. Clearly then, if all early men unanimously, or even
much the greater number of early men, had a religion WITHOUT omens,
no religion, or scarcely a religion, anywhere in the world could
have come into existence WITH omens; the immense majority possessing
the superior military advantage, the small minority destitute of it
would have been crushed out and destroyed. But, on the contrary, all
over the world religions with omens once existed, in most they still
exist; all savages have them, and deep in the most ancient