The very human need for religion and magic as supplements to scientific and technological knowledge is the subject of this work. In 1942 Hsu witnessed a cholera epidemic in a small rural settlement in Yunnan province, China, and found that, contrary to anthropological expectations, the Chinese responded to the crisis with a combination of conciliatory rituals and practical hygienic measures. More than thirty years later, he witnessed the elaborate ritualistic prepartions for another epidemic in the Shatin sub-division of Hong Kong and found the supernatural/empirical response to be...