Superstition

I came across the following passage in my reading this morning. If one removed the reference to Babylonia, one might feel as though the paragraph referred to modern-day America:

Never was a civilization richer in superstitions. Every turn of chance from the anonalies of birth to the varieties of death received a popular, sometimes an official and sacerdotal interpretation in magical or supernatural terms. Every movement of the rivers, every aspect of the stars, every dream, every unusual performance of man or beast, revealed the future to the properly instructed Babylonian. The fate of a a king could be be forecast by observing the movement of a dog, just as we foretell the length of the winter by spying upon the groundhog. THe superstitions of Babylonia seem ridiculous to us, because they differ superficially from our own. There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present. Underneath all civilization, ancient or modern, moved and still moves a sea of magic, superstition and sorcery. Perhaps they will remain when the works of our reason have passed away.

So much for 5,000 years of progress.