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SUPERSTITIONS OF THE LAOS.

A full account of the superstitions of the Laos would very fairly represent their intellectual attainments: their reasoning facilities are entirely in subjection to the imagination in accounting for the most ordinary natural phenomena; their reverential awe of supposed supernatural agencies stands in the place of any rational perception of natural causes. As, however, anything like a full statement of their superstitions would fill a volume, nothing more than a slight sketch of some of their more common superstitions will be attempted in this chapter.

It is difficult for any one living in a community surrounded with all the products of the inventive genius of man, and in the enjoyment of the varied results of intellectual development, to form any adequate conception of the benighted condition of the Laos mind as is indicated by a statement of some of the miserable absurdities entertained by them as sober and fundamental truths. Among them we can see examples in