Section 13 of Inquiries into Human Faculty in its Development by Francis Gelton. This is a LibriVox recording. All the LibriVox recordings have been in public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit thebrivox.org. Recorded by Leon Harvey. Addenda. Restored Sections. The Everyman Reprint of Inquiries into Human Faculty omitted the following two sections and abbreviated the third. Enthusiasm. The changed meaning of the word enthusiasm is an example of the change of belief in modern times. Its ancient meaning was its little one, God in us. Its modern meaning is art and zeal. I noticed that its definition in a recent dictionary is a belief or conceit or private revelation. The vain confidence or opinion of a person that he has special divine communications from the supreme being or familiar intercourse with him. On the other hand, the belief of developed persons that they really commune in their hearts with God, that he put holy ideas and affections into their minds and inspires them with good results is by no means, in their opinion, a vain consent or confidence. To a large number of the ablest class of mankind, the idea of an indwelling divine spirit is so habitual and vivid as to be an oxymatic truth to them. If their views are correct that the germ of a faculty of communing with an unseen world-existing man and much more abundantly in some persons and in others, then considering that this devout persuasion runs in families, as I have fully shown in Hereditary Genius, it would follow that those races should be encouraged that are characterized by spiritual mindedness and who would be far more worthy occupants of the earth than the generality of ourselves. It has been to me a real almost lifelong subject of thought, whether or no, and to what degree the strong subjective views or the peers are trustworthy. It has been the motive of many of the inquiries in this book, for it seems to me a cardinal one, that any question of the improvement of race. Should we keep it before us as an object of endeavor, that future generations may be generally endowed with faculties such as will enable them really to hold as free communion with the Deity as more spiritually minded of our race professed to enjoy at the present time? Or is the opinion held by the peers as the existence of those faculties no more than a vain conceit and confidence, as a dictionary definition just quoted would have it to be? There is no subject more worthy of reverent, but thorough investigation and the objective evidence for or against the existence of inspiration from an unseen world, and none that, up to the present time, has so tantalized the anxious and honest inquirer with unperformed promises of solution. The arguments scattered or hinted at throughout this book are negative so far as they go, but it must be borne in mind that they would be scattered to the winds by a solid objective evidence on the other side, such as could be seriously entertained by scientific men desiring above all things to arrive at truth. Among the arguments of which I speak, there was evidence that persons in sound health were liable to see visions of an apparently objective character and to hear voices that seemed external. All of these hallucinations apparently belonging to the same order of phenomena. I also showed that their existing cause, caught in some instances, be traced with more or less certainity, that many of these visions and voices were meaningless or absurd, and that there was not the slightest ground for accrediting the majority of them to any exalted or external source. Similarly, I showed that the fluency of ordinary speakers and writers proceeds in an automatic way without its being imputed to inspiration, but that when such speakers or writers are exercised upon devout subjects, they rapture suppose the thoughts that then arise to be inspired, other would seem to a bystander, but all fluency has the same general origin. I also pointed out that it is among those hysterical or insane persons in whom the sexual organisation is disturbed that the extreme forms of religious rapture chiefly prevail, that the passion of love has many strange menomorphises, and that life and love in some form and with its customary illusions can hardly be separated in a healthy and perfect animal. An instance of the purely physiological origin of ideas was seen in those twins who are characterised by some originality of conceptions, the same notion occurring at the same moment to both, and both responding nearly the same words, and at the same moment to the person who addresses them, so that the twins appear like a doubled individual. I have further shown in many ways how little trust can be placed in axiomatic belief, for example, certain natural oddities of mind such as the perception of number forms and of colours associated with the sounds always appear to be axiomatic necessities to those who perceive them, and so do many of the sentiments that were instilled in any life. I have also pointed out the necessary untrustworthness of conscious in some particulars. Lastly, it appears to be tacitly recognised by all that the absolute and final court of appeal is not subjective but objective, is therefore not upon our instinctive convictions or fancies that we should lay in most trust, but we should observe the convictions and fancies of others as well as our own, and assign no less trustworthiness to them, especially should we test the truth of all convictions whenever it is possible to do so by appeal to such facts as may admit of repetition. For the purpose of verification, either by ourselves or by others, experience showing that in the long run, the supremacy of subtracts becomes universally acknowledged. Above all things, we must be content to suspend our belief and maintain the freedom of our mental attitude, wherever there is strong reason for doubt. When there is stormy weather and no secure harbour, the sailors put out to sea. It is not anchorage they then want, but sea room. There is nothing early hesitation that may be felt as to the possibility of receiving help and inspiration from an unseen world. To discredit the practice, there is dearly prized by most of us of withdrawing from the crowd and entertaining into quite communing with our hearts, until the agitators at the moment have calmed down and the distorting mirage of a worldly atmosphere has subsided and the greater objects and more enduring affections of our life have reappeared in their due proportions. We may then take comfort and find support in the sense of our forming part of whatever has existed or will exist and this need be the motive of no idle reverie but of an active conviction that we possess an influence which may be small but cannot be inappreciable in defining the as yet undetermined possibilities of an endless future. It may inspire a vigorous resolve to use all the intelligence and perseverance we could command to fulfill our part as members of one great family that strives as a hold towards the floor and our high life. Possibilities of Theocratic Intervention Any attempt to appraise the relative effects of nature and nurture may be objected to. It may be said that it is an imperfect and fallacious proceeding to treat the actions of man as if they were the results of no other influences than may be comprehended under those heads and that the possibility of Theocratic Interference must not be overlooked, whether it take place in response to prayer or independently of it. Such an objection may be perfectly valid when the influences of work in any individual case have to be considered but it happily does not apply to statistical averages for reasons that are quite unconnected with theology and which I will explain in an illustrator. Briefly, it is a very purport and claim of statistics to isolate the effect of specific influences from all others, whether known or unknown, that may act concurrently with them. Suppose a large number of silkworms to be tended by a caretaker and that an observer watched his proceedings as well as he could, only during the daytime and through a telescope. We will further suppose his observations to show that the worms were of various breeds and that they were fed in various ways, irrespectively of their breeds and that the observer desired to discover the relative effects of breed and feeding on the growth of the worms. There can be no doubt as to the principle on which he would work. He would classify his observations so as to compare race with race and he would reclassify them to compare nature with nature. By this well understood treatment, he would isolate the two classes of influence. Now suppose a caretaker had a custom wholly unknown to the observer of feeding the worms in various ways during the nighttime. How would that affect the statistical conclusions? I answer only by increasing the amount of individual deviations from the average result so that other circumstances remaining the same, the observer would not attain the same constancy in his averages unless the number of observations in his groups was larger than before. Let us consider the ways in which the interference of the caretaker might act. One, suppose he favored a particular race by giving food to every individual of it during the nighttime then the effect would be that every individual of that race by virtue of his belonging to the race would be benefited. The observer who noticed the generally thriving condition of worms of that race would be justified in accepting it as a racial characteristic for it would be the consequence of the race of the worm. Two, suppose the caretaker gave additional food in the night to the particular set whom he had fed the best during the daytime. The observer would rightly ascribe the more or less thriving condition of that set to the peculiarities of their nurture. Three, suppose the caretaker acted conversely, feeding those in the nighttime whom he had inadequately fed in the day. If the night and day feeding were of equal importance the observer would find the effects of nurture to be nil and rightly so. If they did not balance it would notice the differential effect. Thus far we see that the relative total effects of nature in nurture would have been rightly appraised. We see at the same time that the effect of any particular kind of nurture could not be determined because the whole of the conditions were not under observation. Four, suppose the caretaker to feed during the night certain worms that he had marked for the purpose in a manner that wholly escaped the notice of the observer and that the selection of the worms that were marked had been made on grounds that he respected both their breed and of the care bestowed on them during the daytime. The result would be that in any large number of worms grouped either according to breed or to the observed dietary the proportioned either group will be the same between those who thrive and those who otherwise would not have thrillen. Consequently the relative well-being of the two groups will remain unaltered. Favour or disfavour that is bestowed irrespectively of breed and of nurture cannot influence the relative effects of breed and nurture in the long run. The foregoing arguments cover all composite cases where the influences are mixed. Therefore, whether there be any unperceived theocratic intervention in favour of particular races or of individuals irrespectively of race or partially in one way and partially in another it cannot under the foregoing suppositions create a statistical comparison between the relative effects of nature and nurture. Had been understood the nature refers to all their hereditary gifts and privileges of the race including constant theocratic intervention in its favour during the period of the observations. There is, however, a fifth supposition which I feel somewhat ashamed to record. It is that the caretaker, knowing he was watched or not like him devised plans for defeating the observer. I fully acknowledge that he could easily succeed in misleading him. The homologue would be a god with the attributes of a devil. A misled, humble and earnest inquirers after truth by malicious art of ice. I should not have dared to have allure to such ignoble supposition had not noted himself put forward in Paradise Lost. Book 8 Where he makes Raphael tell Adam that God did wisely not to divulge his secrets to be scanned by those who ought rather to admire and that if they listened to the literature he had perhaps left the fabric of the heavens to their dispute to movies laughter at their coined opinions. I think the passage, which is written before Newton's time must have jarred on the hearts of many readers and that Milton's supposition of such a character in his god is not likely to be adopted by many persons at the present time. I cannot imagine a more cruel and wicked act as estimated by the modern instinct right and wrong than that which has been so eerily suggested by Milton. We have thus far considered the effects upon statistical conclusions of possible theocratic intervention when, given unlast, we have now to consider that which may be accorded in response to petitions. The offering of devout prayer must depend either on initiative of the deity or on that of the man. The formal condition has just been disposed of under the head of the erratic intervention unlast. The latter can be dealt with in a very simple manner. The desire to pray arising dependently in the heart of the man must be due either to his natural character that is to his nature, to the external circumstances all which I include under the term of his nurture or his free will. The two first of these are already disposed of leaving free will as the only remaining consideration. There are two senses to the word. The popular sense is caprice or at all against something that acts irrespectively of race and nurture. It therefore falls under the fourth of the conditions already disposed of. The sense is freedom to follow once bent. The bent being due either to nurture or to circumstances these cases have also been already considered. Followers from what has been said that the erratic intervention, whether in response to prayer or given unmasked cannot affect the value of statistical conclusions on the relative total effects of nature and nurture unless Nelton's horrible supposition be seriously entertained. Statistical inquiries into the efficiency of prayer. Fortnight interview, volume 12, page 125 to 35, 1872. An eminent authority has recently published a challenge to test the efficiency of prayer by actual experiment. I have been introduced through reading this to prepare the following memoir for production. Nearly the whole of which I wrote and laid by many years ago after completing a large collection of data which I had undertaken for the satisfaction of my own conscience. The efficiency of prayer seems to me as simple as it is a perfectly appropriate and legitimate subject of scientific inquiry. Whether prayer is a facious or not, in any given sense is a matter of fact on which each man must form an opinion for himself. His decision will be based upon data more or less justly handled according to his education and habits. None scientific reasoner will be guided by a confused recollection of crude experience. A scientific reasoner will scrutinize each separate experience before he admits it is evidence and will compare all the cases he has selected on a methodical system. The doctrine commonly preached by the clergy is well expressed in the most recent and by far the most temperate and learned of theological and subtle ideas, namely Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. The article on prayer written by the reverent Dr. Barry states as follows, His real objective, efficiency, is both implied and expressed in Scripture in the plainest terms. We are encouraged to our special blessings both spiritual and temporal in hopes that thus and thus only we may obtain them. It would seem the intention of Holy Scripture to encourage all prayer, more especially intercession in all relations and for all righteous objects. Dr. Hook, the present dean of Chay Chester, states in his Church Dictionary under prayer that the general providence of God acts through what are called the laws of nature. By this particular providence, God interferes with those laws and is promised to interfere in behalf of those who pray in the name of Jesus. We may take it as a general role that we may pray for that, for which we may lovely labor and for that only. The phrases of our Church Service amply countenance this view and if we look to the practice sections of the religious world, we find them consistent in maintaining it. The so-called Low Church notoriously practices absolute belief and special providences according to Peter's prayer. This is testified by the biographies of its members, the journals of its missionaries and the United Prayer meetings of the present day. The Roman Catholics offer religious vows to avert danger. They make pilgrimages to shrines. They hang voodoo for friends and pictorial representations, sometimes by thousands, in their churches of fatal accidents averted by the manifest interference of a so-visited saint. A prima facie argument in favour of the efficiency of prayer is there to be drawn from the very general use of it. The greater part of mankind, during all the historic ages, have been accustomed to prayer for temporal advantages. Our vainer may be urged, must be the reasoning that ventures to oppose this mighty consensus of belief. But so, the argument of universality either proves too much or else it is suicidal. It either compels us to admit that the prayers of pagans or fetish worshippers that are Buddhists who turn praying wheels are recompensed in the same way as those of orthodox believers, whereas the general consensus proves that it has no better foundation than universal tendency of man to gross credulity. The collapse of the argument of universality leaves us solely concerned with the course of testicle question. Are prayers answered or are they not? There are two lines of research by either of which we may pursue this inquiry. The one that promises the most trustworthy results is to examine large classes of cases and to be guided by broad averages. The other which I will not employ in these pages is to deal with isolated instances and although whom they had much used the laser method might reasonably suspect his own judgement, it would certainly run the risk of being suspected by others in choosing one sided examples. The principles are broad and simple upon which our inquiry into the efficiency of prayer must be established. We must gather cases for statistical comparison in which the same object is keenly pursued by two classes similar in their physical but opposite in their spiritual state. The one class being prayerful, the other materialistic. Prudent pious people must be compared with prudent materialistic people and not with the imprudent or the vicious. Secondly, we have no regard in this inquiry to the course by which the answer to prayers may be supposed to operate. We simply look to the final result, whether those who pray attain their objects more frequently than those who do not pray but who live in all other respects under similar conditions. Let us now apply our principles to different cases. A rapid recovery from disease may be conceived or depend on many causes besides the reparative power of the patient's constitution. A miraculous quelling of the disease may be one of these causes. Another is the skill of the physician or of the nurse. Another is a care that the patient takes of himself. In our inquiry, whether a prayerful people recover more rapidly than others under similar circumstances, we need not complicate the question by endearing to learn the channel through which the patient's prayer may have reached it. It is foreign to our present purpose to ask if there be any signs of a miraculous quelling of the disease, or if, through the grace of God, the physician had showed unusual wisdom or the nurse or the patient unusual discretion. We simply look to the main issue. Do sick persons who pray or are prayed for recover on the average more rapidly than others? It appears that in all countries and in all creeds, the priests urge the patient to pray for his own recovery and the patient's friends to aid him with their prayers, but that the doctors take no account whatever of their spiritual agencies unless the office of priests and medical man be combined in the same individual. The medical works of modern Europe team with records of individual illnesses and of broad averages of disease, but I have been able to discover hardly any instance in which a medical man of any repute has attributed recovery to the influence of prayer. There is not a single instance, to my knowledge, in which papers read before statistical societies have recognized the agency of prayer either on disease or anything else. The universal habit of the scientific world to ignore the agency of prayer is a very important fact. To fully appreciate the eloquence of the silence and medical man, we must bear in mind that the care with which they endeavour to assign a sanctuary value to every influence. Have prayers for the sick any notable effect is incredible, but that the doctors who are always on the watch for such things should have observed it and added their influence to that of the priests towards obtaining them for every sick man. If they have staying from doing so, it is not because their attention has never been awakened to the possible efficiency of prayer, but on the contrary, although they have heard it insisted on from childhood upwards, they are unable to detect its influence. Most people have some general belief in the objective efficiency of prayer, but none seem to admit its action in those special cases of which they have scientific cognizance. Those who may wish to pursue these inquiries upon the effect of prayer or their restoration of health could obtain a bunch of materials from possible cases, and in a different way find the proposed in the challenge to which I referred at the beginning of these pages. There are many common melodies whose course is so thoroughly well understood as to admit that acute tables of probability be constructed for their duration and result, such as fractures and amputations. Now it would be perfectly practicable to select out of the patients at different hospitals under treatment for fractures and amputations to considerable groups. The one consisting of markedly religious and PSP friended individuals. The other of those who were remarkably cold-hearted and neglected. In honest comparison of their respective periods of treatment and the results would manifest a single proof of dependency of prayer. It existed even in a new fraction of the amount that religious status exalted us to believe. An inquiry of a somewhat similar nature may be made into the longevity of persons whose lives are prayed for, also that of the praying classes generally. And in both these cases we can easily obtain statistical facts. The public prayer for the sovereign of every state, Protestant and Catholic, is and has been in the spirit of our own grander in health long to live. There is a memoir by Dr. Guy in the Journal of Statistical Society Volume 22, page 355, which he compares the mean age of sovereigns with that of other classes of persons. His results are expressed in the following table. A table is displayed on the page titled, Mean Age Obtained by Males of Various Classes who had survived their 30th year from 1758 to 1843. Deaths by accidents or violence are excluded. There are four columns down the page with professions, the number, average and eminent men. A footnote, the eminent men are those whose lives are recorded in charmers biography with some additions from the annual register. The sovereigns are literally the shortest lived of all who have the advantage of affluence. The prayer has therefore no efficiency, unless the very questionable hypothesis is raised that the conditions of royal life may naturally be yet more fatal and that their influence is partly very incompletely neutralized by the effects of public prayers. We will be seeing that the same table collects the longevity of clergy, royals and medical men. We are justifying considering the clergy to be a far more prayerful class than either of the two. It is their profession to pray and they have the practice of offering mourning and evening family prayers in addition to their private divisions. A reference to any of the numerous public collections of family prayers will show that they are full of petitions for temporal benefits. We do not however find that the clergy are in any way more long lived in consequence. It is true that the clergy as a whole show a life value of 69.49 as against 68.14 for the lawyers and 67.31 for the medical men. But the easy country life and family repose of so many of the clergy are obvious sanitary conditions in the favour. This difference is reversed when the comparison is made between distinguished members of the three classes. That is to say, between persons of sufficient note to have had their lives recorded in a biographical dictionary. When we examine this category the value of life among the clergy, lawyers and medical men is as 66.42 66.51 and 67.07 respectively. The clergy being the shortest lived of the three, hence the prayers of the clergy for protection against the perils and dangers of the night, for protection during the day and for recovery from sickness appear to be futile in result. In my work on hereditary genius and in the chapters on divines I have worked out the subject with some neatness on other data but with precisely the same result. I show that the divines are not specially favoured in those worldly matters for which they naturally pray but rather the contrary a fact which I ascribe in part to their having as a class indifferent constitutional figure. I give abundant reason for all this and do not care to repeat myself but I should be glad if such are the readers of this present paper who may be accustomed to statistics would refer to the chapter I have mentioned. They will find it of use in confirming what I say here. They will believe me the more when I say that I have taken considerable pains to get at the truth in the questions raised in this present memoir and that when I was engaged upon them I worked so far as my material went with as much care as I gave to that chapter on divines and lastly they will understand that when writing the chapter in question I had all this material to me unused which justified me in speaking out as decidedly as I did then. A further enquiry may be made into duration of life among missionaries but it would lay greater stress upon their mortality than upon that of the clergy because the laudable object of a missionary's career is rendered almost nookatory by his early death. A man goes so to a tropical climate in the prime of manhood who has a probability of many years of useful life before him and he remained at home. He has a certainty of being able to accomplish sterling good as a missionary if he should live long enough to learn the language of the country. In the interval he is almost useless yet the painful experience in many years shows only too clearly that the missionary is not supernaturally endowed with health he does not live longer than other people. One missionary at another dies shortly after his arrival the work that lay almost within the grass made to them lingers incomplete. It must here be repeated that comparative immunity from disease compels the suspension of no purely material law such an expression be permitted. Tropical fever for example is due to many subtle causes which are partially under man's control as single hours exposure to sun or wet or fatigue or mental agitation will determine an attack. Now even if God acted only on the minds of the missionaries his action might be as much to the advantage of their health as if he wore a physical miracle. He could disinclined them to take these results in due chance such as the forest march the wetting, the abstinence from food or the night exposure any one of which was competent to develop the fever that struck them down. He must not dwell upon the circumstances of individual cases and say this was a provincial escape or that was a salutary chastisement but we must take the board of averages of mortality and when we do so we find that the missionaries do not form a favoured class. The efficiency of prayer may yet further be tested by inquiry into the proportion of deaths at the time of birth among the children of the praying and the non-praying classes. The solicitude of parents is so powerfully directed towards the safety of their expected offspring as to leave no room to dug that pious parents pray favorably for it especially as a death before baptism is considered the most serious evil by many Christians. However, the distribution of still births appears wholly unaffected by pity. The proportion for instance of the still births published in the record newspaper and in the times was found by me on the examination of a particular period to burn identical relation to the total number of deaths. His inquiry might easily be pursued by those who consider that more ample evidence was required. When we pray in our liturgy that the nobility may be endured with grace, wisdom and understanding, we pray for that which is clearly incompatible with insanity. Does that fight for scourge, spare our nobility? Does spare a very religious people more than others? The answer is an empathetic negative to both of these questions.  Religious madness is very common indeed. As I have already hinted, I do not propose any special inquiry whether the general laws of physical nature are ever suspended in fulfilment of prayer, whether for instance success has attended the occasional prayers in the liturgy when they have been used for rain, for fair weather, for the stilling of the sea in a storm or for the abatement of a pestance. I abstain from doing so for two reasons. First, if it is proved that God does not answer one large class of prayers at all, it would be of less importance to pursue the inquiry. Secondly, the modern feeling of this country is so opposed to a belief in the occasional suspension of the general laws of nature that an English reader would merely smile as such an investigation. If we are satisfied that the actions of man are not influenced by prayer, even though the subtle influences of his thoughts and will, the only probable form of agency will have been disproved and no one would care to advance the claim in favour of direct physical interferences. Biographies do not show that devotional influences have clustered any remarkable degree around the youth of those who, whether by their talents or social position, have left a mark upon our English history. Lord Campbell is prefaced to the lie as the Chancellor says, there is no office in the history of any nation that has been filled with such a long succession of distinguished and interesting men as the office of Lord Chancellor, and that, generally speaking, the most eminent men, if not the most virtuous, have been selected to adorn it. His implied disparagement of their purity is fully sustained by an examination of their respective biographies and by a taunt of Horace Walpole quoted in the same preface. An equal absence of remarkable devotional tenancies may be observed in the lives of the leaders of great political parties. The founders of our great families too often owe their advancement to trickery and time-serving courteouship. The beliefs so frequently expressed in observes that the descendants of the righteous shall continue and that those of the wicked shall surely fail is not fulfilled in the history of our English peerage. Take for instance the highest class that are the dookal houses. The influence of social position in this country is so enormous that the possession of a dookdom is a power that can hardly be understood without some sort of calculation. There are, I believe, only 27 dooks to about 8 millions of adult male Englishmen, or about 3 dooks to each million. Yet the cabinet of 14 ministers which governs this country, and India too, commonly contains one dook often two, and in recent times three. The political privilege inherited with a dookdom in this country is at the lowest estimate, many thousand-fold above the average birthright of Englishmen. What was the origin of these dookal families whose influence on the destiny of England and her dependencies is so enormous? Were their founders, the Emily Develd children of eminently Peo's parents, have they or their ancestors been distinguished among the preying classes? Not so. I given a footnote a list of their names which recalls many a deed of patriotism, feller and skill, many instance of eminent merit of the worldly sword which we Englishmen on the six days out of the seven. In his scandals many disgrace, but not on the other hand a single instance known to me of eminently preval qualities. For at least the existing dookal houses are unable to claim the title of having been raised into existence through the devout habits of their progenitors, because the families of Buchlech, Grafton, St. Albans and Richmond were thus highly enabled solely on the grounds of their being descendants from Charles II and four of his mistresses, namely Lucy Walters, Vibera Villiers, Nell Gwein and Louise D. Cueroall the dookdom of Cleveland may almost be reckoned as a fifth instance. The civil liberty we enjoy in England and the energy of our race have given rise to a number of institutions, societies, commercial adventures, political meetings and combinations of all sorts. Some of these are exclusively clerical, some lay in others mixed. It is impossible for a person to have taken an active share in social life without having had abundant means of estimating for himself and of hearing the opinion of others on the value of a pre-bonderate in clerical element in business committees. For my own part I have never heard a favourable one. The procedure of convocation, which, like all exclusively clerical meetings, is opened with prayer, has not inspired the outer world with much respect. The histories of the great councils of the church are most painful to read. There is reason to expect that devout and superstitious men should be unreasonable. For a person who believes his thoughts to be inspired necessarily accredits his prejudices with divine authority. He is therefore little accessible to argument and he is intolerant of those whose opinions differ from his, especially on first principles. Consequently, he is a bad co-adjutor in business matters. He is a common weekday opinion of the world that praying people are not practical. Again, there is a large class of instances where an enterprise, on behalf of pious people, is executed by an agency of the profane. Do such enterprises prosper beyond the average? For instance, a vessel on a missionary around is navigated by ordinary seamen. A fleet followed by the prayer of the English nation carries reinforcements to Quirl and Indian Mutiny. We do not care to ask whether the result of these prayers is to obtain favourable wins, but simply whether they ensure a pituous voyage, whatever may be the agencies by which that result was obtained. The success of voyages might be due to many other agencies than the suspension of the physical laws that control the wins and currents, just as we showed that a rapid recovery from illness might be due to other causes that direct interference with cosmic order. They might have been put into the captain's heart to navigate in that course and to perform those acts of seamen-ship, which proved links in a chain that led to eventual success. A very small matter would suffice to make a great difference in the end. A vessel navigated by a man who was a good forecaster of weather and an accomplished hydrograpper would considerably outstrip another that was deficient in so accomplished a commander, but likewise similarly equipped. The perfectly instructed navigator would deviate from the most direct cause by perhaps some mere trifle. First here, then there in order to bring his vessel within favouring slants of winds and advantageous currents. A ship commanded by a captain and steered by a sailor whose hearts were miraculously acted upon is answered to prayer would unconsciously, as by instant, or even as a word by mistake, perform these deviations from routine which would lead to automatic success. The missionaries who were the most earnestly prayed for are usually those who sail on routes where there is little traffic and therefore where there is more opportunity for the effects of the secret, provincial overruling to display themselves than among those who sail in ordinary sea voyages. In the usual sea routes a great deal is known of the peculiarities of the seasons and currents and of the whereabouts of hidden dangers of all kinds. The average risk is small and the insurance is low. But when vessels are bound to ports like those sought by the missionaries the case is different. The risk that attends their voyages is largely increased and the insurance is proportionally raised. But is the risk equally increased in respect to missionary vessels and to those of traders and slave dealers? The comparison between the fortune that attends prayerful and non-prayable people may here be most happily made. The missionaries are eminently among the former category than the slave dealers and traders we speak of in the other. Traders in the unhealthy and barbarous regions which we refer to as notoriously the most godless and reckless coverage of any of their set. We have unfortunately little knowledge of the sea risks of slavers because the rates of their insurance involve the risk of capture. There is however a universal testimony in the parliamentary reports on slavery to the excellent and skillful manner in which these vessels are sailed and navigated which is a primer for K reason for believing their sea risks to be small. As to the relative risks run by ordinary traders and missionary vessels the insurance officers absolutely ignore the slightest difference between them. They look to the class of the vessel and to the station to which she is bound and to nothing else. The notion that a missionary or other peers enterprise carries away immunity from danger and has never been entertained by insurance companies. To perceive their inquiry whether enterprises on behalf of P.S. people succeed better than others when they are entrusted to profane hands we may ask is a bank or other commercial undertaking more secure than developed manner for their holders or when the funds of P.S. people or charities or of religious bodies are deposited in escaping or when proceedings are opened with prayer as was the case with the disastrous Royal British Bank is impossible to say yes. There are far too many sad experiences of the contrary. If prayer full habits had influence on temporal success it is very probable as we must again repeat that insurance officers descriptions were long ago have discovered and made a balance for it. It would be most unwise from a business point of view to allow the devout supposing their great longevity even probable to obtain annuities at the same low rates as the profane. Before insurance officers accept a life they make confidential inquiries into the antecedents of the applicant but such a question has ever been heard or as does he habitually use family prayers and private divisions insurance officers so wakeful to sanatory influences absolutely ignore prayer as one of them. The same is true for instances of all descriptions as those connected with fire, ships, lightning, hail, accidental death and cattle sickness. How is it possible to explain why Quakers who are most devout and most shrewd men of business have ignored these considerations except on the ground they do not really believe in what they really assert about the efficiency of prayer. It was at one time considered an act of mistrust in an overruling province to put lightning conductors on churches for it was said that God would surely take care of his own but Erego's collection of the accidents from lightning showed they were sorely needed and now lightning conductors are universal. Other kinds of accidents before churches equally with other buildings of the same class such as architectural floors resulting in great expenses for repair, fire, earthquakes and avalanches. The cogency of all these arguments has maturely increased by the recollection that many items of ancient faith have been successfully abandoned by the Christian world to the domain of recognized superstition. It is not two centuries ago long subsequent to the days of Shakespeare and other great names that the sovereign of this country was accustomed to lay hands over the sick for their recovery and the sanction of a regular church service which was not emitted from our prayer books to the time of George II which is where unanimously believed in and were regularly exercised and punished by law after the beginning of the last century. Our deals and duels most reasonable solutions of complicated difficulties according to the popular theory of religion were found absolutely fallacious in practice. The miraculous power of relics and images still so general in southern Europe is scouted in England. The importance ascribed to dreams the barely extinct claims of astrology the orgraries of Godar evil luck and many other well known products of superstition which are found to exist in every country have ceased to be believed in by us. This is a natural cause of events just as the waters of jealousy and the orem and thummen of the mosaic law have become obsolete in the times of the latter Jewish kings. The civilized world has already yielded enormous amount of honest conviction to inexorable requirements on solid fact and it seems to me that all belief in the efficiency of prayer in the sense in which I have been considering it must be yielded also. The evidence I have been able to collect bears wholly and solely in that direction and in the face of it the onus probandi lies henceforth on the other side. Nothing that I have said negatives the fact that the mind may be relieved by the utterance of prayer. The impulse to pour out the feelings and sound is not peculiar to man. Any mother that has lost her young and wonders about moaning and looking purchasely for sympathy possesses much of that which prompts men to pray in articulate words. There is a yearning of the heart a craving for help. It knows not where certainly from no source that it sees.  She abandons hope through her own efforts and screams but to whom? It is a voice convulsively sent out into space whose utterance is a physical relief. These feelings are distressed and of terror is simple and an inarticulate cry suffices to give vent to them but the reason why man is not satisfied by uttering inarticulate cries though sometimes they are felt to be the most appropriate is only to his superior intellectual powers. His memory travels back through interlacing paths and dwells in various connected incidents his emotions are complex and he prays at length. Neither does anything I have said profess to throw light on the question of how far it is possible for man to commune in his heart with God. We know that many persons of high intellectual gifts and critical minds look upon it as an axiomatic certainty that they possesses power. Although it is impossible for them to establish any satisfactory criteria and to distinguish between what may really be born in upon them from without and what arises from within but which through a sham of imagination appears to be external. A covenant sense of communion with God must necessarily rejoice and strengthen the heart and divert it from petty cares. And it is equally certain that similar benefits are not excluded from those who want to conscious this grounds are skeptical as to the reality of a power of communion. These can dwell on the undoubted fact that there exists a solidarity between themselves and what surrounds them though the endless reaction of physical laws among which their registry influences are to be included. They know that they are descended from an endless past that they have a brotherhood with all that is and have each his own share of responsibility in the parentage of an endless future. The effort to familiarize your imagination with this great idea is much in common with the effect of communing with God. As reaction on the mind of the thinker is in many important respects the same it may not equally rejoice the heart but it is quite as powerful as ennobling the results and it is found to give serenity during the trials of life and in the shadow approaching death. End of section 13 An end of enquiry into human faculty and its developments by Francis Kelton.


Have you ever heard the saying penny wise and pound foolish? Have you ever heard the saying? The squeeze the juice has to be worth the squeeze Well selling puts on PayPal might be that scenario The puts on PayPal are not very juicy and And my argument is they're not worth selling you you might be better off buying the stock first Jumping over to seeking alpha If you look at seeking alpha PayPal has a forward PE of 12 That gives it essentially an earnings yield of 8% it's like buying a house that makes 8% But even better than that It's supposed to grow between 13 and almost 20% a year Do you know what that'll do over a decade? punch it in a calculator if If it's 20% growth rule of 72 it'll double every three to four years If the multiple improves or if the economy gets more optimistic or investors get more optimistic on PayPal The multiple will change making it more valuable So imagine selling the puts making a little bit of money, and then this thing goes up Doubles triples quadruples, whatever it does something fantastic over the next ten years Here are the puts for about a year on PayPal If you sell the the at-the-money put on a hundred shares You're gonna get about a hundred or seven hundred bucks a little more than ten percent But you have to stay in that put For up to a year or get assigned or close it early But you're gonna be committed for about for a year, and it's a little more than ten percent But the earnings yield on PayPal is almost the same amount Which one should you do should you do in my experience? That one doesn't make a lot of sense So I wouldn't want to make only 10% There's a lot of investors who trade options and they're targeting like 20% if you did a covered call You'd make a little a little something like 15% because there's more interest in the calls But you same thing you give up the upside if If it goes in your favor and you sell the put you get 10 11% But then this this thing doubles and triples later on That's what you that's what you're facing so Let me know if you would sell this put or If you agree with me that it might be better just to buy a quality company that earns well and can grow in the future Cheers