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Superstition in simultaneity.11 Simultaneous things are thought to be connected. Our relative dies far away, at the same time we dream about him-there you are! But countless relatives die without our dreaming about them. It is as with shipwrecked people who make vows: later, in the temple, one does not see the votive tablets of those who perished.
A man dies; an owl screeches; a clock stops; all in one nocturnal hour: shouldn't there be a connection there? This idea presumes a kind of intimacy with nature that flatters man.
Such superstition is found again in refined form in historians and painters of culture. They tend to have a kind of hydrophobia towards all senseless juxtapositions, even though these are so abundant in the life of individuals, and of peoples.
