Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 54.djvu/807

Rh It will be noticed that of the digits preferred, 7 surpasses any of the others. Not only, then, do we tend to select an odd number for units' place when the guess ranges between one and a thousand, but of these digits 7 is much preferred. In connection with this fact one immediately recalls all he has heard about 7 as a sacred number, and its professed significance in the so-called "occult sciences." I think one is warranted in saying from an introspective point of view



that there is a shadow of superstition present in all attempts at pure guessing. There appears to be some unexpressed feeling of lucky numbers or some mental easement when one unreasoned position is taken rather than any other.

It is impossible on the evidence furnished by this study to give more than hints at the probable reason for the preference here indicated. But it is worth while to glance backward to earlier conditions, when the scientific attitude toward all the facts of life and mind was far more subordinated to supernatural interpretations than it is to-day. In this way we may catch a thread which still binds us to habits formed in the indefinite past.

The Greeks considered the even numbers as representative of the feminine principle, and as belonging and applying to things terrestrial. To them the odd numbers were endowed with a masculine virtue, which in time was strengthened into supernatural and celestial qualities. The same belief was prevalent among the Chinese. With