ON SUPERSTITION

The drift of Plutarch’s remarkable Treatise on Superstition is well given in the opening words of Bacon’s famous Essay: ‘It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of him. For the one is unbelief, the other is contumely, and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity.’ The word—the same which, in its adjective, St. Paul applies, almost in a good sense, to the Athenians of his day[262]—is correctly defined by Theophrastus, in his ‘character’ of the superstitious man, as timidity with regard to the supernatural, and this timidity at once passes into cowardice. There is in this treatise a fighting spirit and a directness of attack unusual in Plutarch, who mostly speaks with academic balance about conflicting schools of thought. Thus it has been suggested that one or other of his writings against the Epicureans may be intended to supply the required study ‘On Atheism’. There are many passages in theLivesand also in theMoraliawhere the author is seen to mediate between credulity and scepticism, superstition and atheism; usually showing a tendency to ‘the more benign extreme’; there is more to be lost by an undue hardening of the intellect than by a wise hospitality to beliefs and ideas which lie beyond strict proof. Here the attack is one-sided and uncompromising. At the end of the treatise true piety is exhibited as a middle path between superstition and atheism. This is not to be understood of a quantitative excess or defect. Piety in excess may induce a habit which deserves the name of superstition,such as has been the fair butt of satirists in all ages, and of humorists like Theophrastus. But Plutarch is thinking not of excess, but of perversion, a piety directed to wrong powers, or to powers conceived of in the wrong way. There is a striking instance in theLife of Pelopidas(c. 21), when some of the prophets invited that great soldier to obey the warning of a dream by slaying his daughter, for which there were ancient precedents. ‘But some on the other side urged, that such a barbarous and impious oblation could not be pleasing to any superior beings; that Typhons and Giants did not preside over the world, but the general father of Gods and men; that it was absurd to imagine any Divinities or powers delighted in slaughter or sacrifices of men; or, if there were any such, they were to be neglected, as weak and unable to assist; such unreasonable and cruel desires could only proceed from, and live in, weak and depraved minds.’

The situation is saved by the good sense of the augur Theocritus, the same who plays a quaint and gallant part in the enterprise described inThe Genius of Socrates; and a chestnut colt takes the place of the daughter. And there is no doubt on which side of the argument Plutarch’s sympathies lie.

An admirable running commentary on Plutarch’s treatise is supplied by theDiscourse on Superstitionof John Smith, the Cambridge Platonist (1618-52), here printed as an Appendix to it. Like Bacon, John Smith has written also aDiscourse on Atheism, from which it may be sufficient for the present purpose to quote the words of the Son of Sirach appended as his conclusion:

‘O Lord, Father and God of my life, give me not a proud look, but turn away from thy servants a Giant-like minde’ (Ecclus. 23, 4).

See, for this whole treatise, Dr. Oakesmith’s Chapter IX, pp. 179 foll.

ON SUPERSTITION

|164E|The stream of ignorance and of misconception about the Gods passed, from the very first, into two channels; one branch flowed, as it were, over stony places, and has produced atheism in hard characters, the other over moist ground, and this has produced superstition in the tender ones. Now any error of judgement, especially on such matters, is a vicious thing, but if passion be added it is more vicious. For all passion is ‘deceit accompanied by inflammation’; and as dislocations are more|F|serious when there is also a wound, so are distortions of the soul when there is passion. A man thinks that atoms and a void are the first principles of the universe; the conception is a false one, but does not produce ulceration or spasm, or tormenting pain. Another conceives of wealth as the greatest|165|good; this falsity has poison in it, preys on his soul, deranges it, allows him no sleep, fills him with stinging torments, thrusts him down steep places, strangles him, takes away all confidence of speech. Again, some think that virtue is a corporeal thing, and vice also; this is a gross piece of ignorance perhaps, but not worthy of lament or groans. But where there are such judgements and conceptions as these:

Alas, poor Virtue! so thou art but words,And as a thing I was pursuing thee[263]—

Alas, poor Virtue! so thou art but words,

And as a thing I was pursuing thee[263]—

dropping, he means, the injustice which makes money, and the intemperance which is parent of all pleasure—, these it is worth our while to pity and to resent also, because their presence|B|in the soul breeds diseases and passions in numbers, very worms and vermin.

II. And so it is with the subjects of our present discourse. Atheism, which is a faulty judgement that there is nothing blessed or imperishable, seems to work round through disbelief in the Divine to actual apathy; its object in not acknowledging Gods is that it may not fear them. Superstition is shown by its very name to be a state of opinion charged with emotion and productive of such fear as debases and crushes the man; he thinks that there are Gods, but that they are|C|grievous and hurtful. The atheist appears to be unmoved at the mention of the Divine; the superstitious is moved, but in a wrong and perverted sense. Ignorance has produced in the one disbelief of the power which is helping him, in the other a superadded idea that it is hurting. Hence atheism is theory gone wrong, superstition is ingrained feeling, the outcome of false theory.

III. Now all diseases and affections of the soul are discreditable, but there is in some of them a gaiety, a loftiness, a distinction, which come of a light heart; we may say that none of these is wanting in a strong active impulse. Only there is this common charge to be laid against every such affection, that by stress of the active impulse it forces and|D|constrains the reason. Fear alone, as deficient in daring as it is in reason, keeps the irrational part inoperative, without resource or shift. Hence it has been called by two names, ‘Deima’ and ‘Tarbos’,[264]because it at once constricts and vexes the soul. But of all fears that which comes of superstition is most inoperative, and most resourceless. The man who never sails fears not the sea, nor the non-combatant, war; the home-keeping man fears no robbers, the poor no informers, the plain citizen no envy, the dweller among the Gauls[265]no earthquake, among the Ethiopians no thunder. The man who fears the Gods fears everything, land, sea; air, sky; darkness,light; sound, silence; to dream, to wake. Slaves forget|E|their masters while they sleep, sleep eases the prisoner’s chain; angry wounds, ulcers that raven and prey upon the flesh, and agonizing pains, all stand aloof from men that sleep:

Dear soothing sleep, that com’st to succour pains,How sweet is thy approach in this my need.[266]

Dear soothing sleep, that com’st to succour pains,

How sweet is thy approach in this my need.[266]

Superstition does not allow a man to say this; she alone has no truce with sleep, and suffers not the soul to breathe awhile, and|F|take courage, and thrust away its bitter heavy thoughts about the God. The sleep of the superstitious is a land of the ungodly, where blood-curdling visions, and monstrous whirling phantoms, and sure penalties are awake; the unhappy soul is hunted by dreams out of every spell of sleep it has, lashed and punished by itself, as though by some other, and receives injunctions horrible and revolting. Then when they have risen out of sleep, they do not scorn it all, or laugh it down, or perceive that none of the things which vexed them was real, but, escaped from the shadow of an illusion with no harm in it, they fall upon a vision of the day and deceive themselves outright, and spend|166|money to vex their souls, meeting with quacks and charlatans who tell them:

If nightly vision fright thy sleep,Or hags their hellish revel keep,[267]

If nightly vision fright thy sleep,

Or hags their hellish revel keep,[267]

call in the wise woman, and take a dip into the sea, then sit on the ground, and remain so a whole day.

Ah! Greeks, what ills outlandish have ye found,[268]

namely, by superstition—dabbling in mud, plunges into filth, keepings of Sabbaths, falling on the face, foul attitudes, weird prostrations. Those who were concerned to keep musicregular used to enjoin on singers to the harp to sing ‘with|B|mouth aright’. But we require that men should pray to the gods with mouth aright and just; not to consider whether the tongue of the victim be clean and correct, while they distort their own and foul it with absurd outlandish words and phrases, and transgress against the divine rule of piety as our fathers knew it. The man in the comedy has a passage which puts it happily to those who plate their bedsteads with gold and silver:

The one free gift of gods to mortals, sleep,Why make it for thyself a costly boon?[269]

The one free gift of gods to mortals, sleep,

Why make it for thyself a costly boon?[269]

|C|So we may say to the superstitious man, that the Gods gave sleep for oblivion of troubles and a respite from them; why make it for thyself a cell of punishment, a chamber of abiding torment, whence the miserable soul cannot run away unto any other sleep? Heraclitus[270]says that ‘waking men have one world common to all, but in sleep each betakes him to a world of his own.’ The superstitious has no world, no, not a common world, since neither while he is awake does he enjoy his reason, nor when he sleeps is he set free from his tormentor; reason ever drowses, and fear is ever awake; there is no escape, nor change of place.

IV. Polycrates was a terrible tyrant in Samos, Periander|D|at Corinth, yet no one continued to fear them when he had removed to a free and democratic state. But when a man fears the sovereignty of the Gods as a grim inexorable tyranny, whither shall he migrate, where find exile, what sort of land can he find where no Gods are, or of sea? Into what portion of the world wilt thou creep and hide thyself, and believe, thou miserable creature, that thou hast escaped from God? There is a law which allows even slaves, if they have despairedof liberty, to petition to be sold, and so change to a milder master. Superstition allows no exchange of Gods, nor is it possible to find a God who shall not be terrible to him who fears those of his country and his clan, who shivers at the ‘Preservers’ and trembles in alarm before the beneficent beings from whom we ask wealth, plenty, peace, concord, a successful|E|issue for our best of words and works. And then these men reckon slavery a misfortune, and say:

A dire mishap it is, for man or maid,To pass to service of some ill-starred lord.[271]

A dire mishap it is, for man or maid,

To pass to service of some ill-starred lord.[271]

Yet how much more dire is it, think you, for them to pass to lords from whom is no flight, or running away, no shifting. The slave has an altar to flee unto, even for robbers many temples are inviolable, and fugitives in war, if they lay hold of shrine or temple, take courage. The superstitious shudders in alarm at those very things beyond all others, wherein those who fear the worst find hope. Never drag the superstitious man from temples; within them is punishment and retribution|F|for him. Why more words? ‘Death is the limit of life to all mankind.’[272]Yes, but even death is no limit to superstition; superstition crosses the boundaries to the other side, and makes fear endure longer than life. It attaches to death the apprehension of undying ills, and when it ceases from troubles, it|167|thinks to enter upon troubles which never cease. Gates are opened for it into a very depth of Hades, rivers of fire and streams which flow out of Styx mingle their floods; darkness itself is spread with phantoms manifold, obtruding cruel visions and pitiful voices; there are judges and tormentors, and chasms and abysses which teem with myriad evil things. Thus has superstition, that God-banned fear of Gods, made that inevitable toitself by anticipation, of which it had escaped the suffering in act.[273]

V. None of these horrors attaches to atheism. Yet its ignorance is distressing; it is a great misfortune to a soul|B|to see so wrong and grope so blindly about such great matters, because the light is extinguished of the brightest and most availing out of many eyes when the perception of God is lost. But to the opinion now before us there does attach from the very first, as we have already said, an emotional element, cankering, perturbing, and slavish. Plato[274]says that music, whose work it is to make men’s lives harmonious and rhythmical, was given to them by Gods, not for wanton tickling of the ears, but to clear the revolutions and harmonies of the soul from the disturbing impulses which rove within the body, such as most often run riot, where the Muse is not or the Grace,|C|and do violence and mar the tune; to bring them to order, to roll them smooth, to lead them aright, and settle them.

But they whom Zeus not loves(says Pindar)[275]Turn to the sound a dim disdainful earWhat time the Muses’ voice they hear.

But they whom Zeus not loves(says Pindar)[275]

Turn to the sound a dim disdainful ear

What time the Muses’ voice they hear.

Yes, they grow savage and rebellious, as the tigers, they say, are maddened and troubled at the sound of the drum, and at last tear themselves to pieces. A lesser evil then it is for those who, through deafness and a dulled ear, are apathetic and insensible to music. Tiresias was unfortunate that he could not see his children and familiar friends, but far worse was the|D|case of Athamas and of Agave, who saw them as lions and stags. Better, I think, it was for Hercules in his madness not to see his sons, or feel their presence, than to treat his dearest ones as enemies.

VI. What then? Comparing the feeling of the atheists withthat of the superstitious, do we not find a similar difference? The former see no Gods at all, the latter think that they exist as evil beings. The former neglect them, the latter imagine that to be terrible which is kind, that tyrannical which is fatherly, loving care to be injury, the ‘unapproachable’[276]to be savage and brutal. Then, trusting to coppersmiths, or marble workers, or modellers in wax, they fashion the forms of the Gods in human shape, and these they mould and frame and worship; while|E|they despise philosophers and men who know life, if they point them to the majesty of God consisting with goodness, and magnanimity, and patience, and solicitude. Thus in the former the result is insensibility and want of belief in all that is fair and helpful, in the latter confusion and fear in the presence of help. In a word, atheism is an apathy for the Divine which fails to perceive the good, superstition is an excess of feeling which suspects that the good is evil. They fear the Gods, and they flee to the Gods for refuge; they flatter and they revile them; they invoke and they censure them. It is man’s common lot not to succeed always or in all.|F|

They, from sickness free and age,Quit of toils, the deep-voiced rageOf Acheron for ay have left behind,

They, from sickness free and age,

Quit of toils, the deep-voiced rage

Of Acheron for ay have left behind,

as Pindar[277]says; but human sufferings and doings flow in a mingled stream of vicissitude, now this way, now that.

VII. Now look with me at the atheist, first when things cross his wishes, and consider his attitude. If he is a decent, quiet person, he takes what comes in silence, and provides his own means of succour and consolation. If he be impatient and querulous, he directs all his complainings against Fortune, and|168|the way things happen; he cries out that nothing goes by justice or as Providence ordains, all is confused and jumbled up;the tangled web of human life is unpicked. Not so the superstitious: if the ill which has befallen him be the veriest trifle, still he sits down and builds on to his annoyance a pile of troubles, grievous and great and inextricable, heaping up for himself fears, dreads, suspicions, worries, a victim to every sort of groaning and lamentation; for he blames not man, nor fortune, nor|B|occasion, nor himself, but for all the God. From that quarter comes pouring upon him, he says, a Heaven-sent stream of woe; he is punished thus by the Gods not because he is unfortunate, but because he is specially hated by them, all that he suffers is his own proper deserts. Then the atheist, when he is sick, reckons up his own surfeitings, carouses, irregularities in diet, or over-fatigues, or unaccustomed changes of climate or place. Or, again, if he have met with political reverses, become unpopular or discredited in high quarters, he seeks for the cause in himself or his party.

Where my transgression? or what have I done? what duty omitted?[278]

But to the superstitious every infirmity of his body, every|C|loss of money, any death of a child, foul weather and failures in politics, are reckoned for blows from the God and assaults of the fiend. Hence he does not even take courage to help himself, to get rid of the trouble, or to remedy it, or make resistance, lest he should seem to be fighting the Gods, and resisting when punished. So the doctor is thrust out of the sick man’s chamber, and the mourner’s door is closed against the sage who comes to comfort and advise. ‘Man,’ he says, ‘let me take my punishment, as the miscreant that I am, an accursed|D|object of hate to Gods and daemons.’ It is open to a man who has no conviction that there are Gods, when suffering from some great grief and trouble, to wipe away a tear, to cut his hair, to put off his mourning. How are you going to address the superstitiousin like case, wherein to bring him help? He sits outside, clothed in sackcloth, or with filthy rags hanging about him, as often as not rolling naked in the mud, while he recites errors and misdoings of his own, how he ate this, or drank that, or walked on a road which the spirit did not allow. At the very best, if he have taken superstition in a mild form, he sits in the house fumigating and purifying himself. The old women ‘make a peg of him’, as Bion says, and on it they hang—whatever|E|they choose to bring!

VIII. They say that Tiribazus, when arrested by the Persians, drew his scimitar, being a powerful man, and fought for his life; then, when they loudly protested that the arrest was by the king’s orders, at once dropped his point, and held out his hands to be tied. Is not this just what happens in the case before us? Other men make a fight against mischances and thrust all aside, that they may devise ways of escape and evade what is unwelcome to themselves. But the superstitious man listens to nobody, and addresses himself thus: ‘Poor wretch,|F|thy sufferings come from Providence, and by the order of the God.’ So he flings away all hope, gives himself up, flies, obstructs those who try to help him. Many tolerable troubles are made deadly by various superstitions. Midas[279]of old, as we are to believe, dispirited and distressed by certain dreams, was so miserable that he sought a voluntary death by drinking bulls’ blood. Aristodemus, king of the Messenians, during the war with the Lacedaemonians, when dogs were howling like wolves, and rye grass sprouting around his ancestral hearth, in utter despair at the extinction of all his hopes, cut his own throat. Perhaps it would have been better for Nicias[280], the Athenian|169|general, to find the same release from superstition as Midas orAristodemus, and not, in his terror of the shadow when the moon was eclipsed, to sit still under blockade, and afterwards, when forty thousand had been slaughtered or taken alive, to be taken prisoner and die ingloriously. For there is nothing so terrible when the earth blocks the way, or when its shadow meets the moon in due cycle of revolutions; what is terrible is that a man should plunge[281]into the darkness of superstition,|B|and that its dark shadow should confound a man’s reason and make it blind in matters where reason is most needed.

Glaucus, see! the waves already from the depth of ocean stirred,And a cloud is piling upwards, right above the Gyrean point,Certain presage of foul weather.[282]

Glaucus, see! the waves already from the depth of ocean stirred,

And a cloud is piling upwards, right above the Gyrean point,

Certain presage of foul weather.[282]

When the helmsman sees this, he prays that he may escape out of the peril, and calls on the Gods that save; but, while he prays, his hand is on the tiller, and he lowers the yard-arm,

Furls his mainsail, and from billows black as Erebus he flees.[283]

Hesiod[284]tells the farmer to pray to Zeus below the earth and holy Artemis before he ploughs or sows, but to hold on to|C|the plough-handle as he prays. Homer[285]tells us that Ajax, before meeting Hector in single combat, commanded the Greeks to pray for him to the Gods; then, while they were praying, he was arming. Agamemnon, when he had given orders to the fighters:

Let each his spear set, and prepare his shield,

then begs of Zeus:

Grant that this hand make Priam’s halls a heap.[286]

For God is the hope of valour, not the subterfuge of cowardice.The Jews, on the other hand, because it was a sabbath, sat on in uncleansed clothes, while their enemies planted their ladders and took the walls, never rising to their feet, as though entangled in the one vast draw-net of their superstition.[287]

IX. Such then is superstition in disagreeable matters and on|D|what we call critical occasions, but it has no advantage, even in what is more pleasant, over atheism. Nothing is more pleasant to men than feasts, temple banquets, initiations, orgies, prayers to the Gods, and solemn supplications. See the atheist there, laughing in a wild sardonic peal at the proceedings, probably with a quiet aside to his intimates, that those who think this all done for the Gods are crazed and possessed; but that is the worst that can be said of him. The superstitious man wants to be cheerful and enjoy himself, but he cannot.

Rife too the city is with heavy reekOf victims slain, and rife with divers cries,The wail for healing and the moan for death.[288]

Rife too the city is with heavy reek

Of victims slain, and rife with divers cries,

The wail for healing and the moan for death.[288]

|E|So is the soul of the superstitious. With the crown on his head he grows pale; while he sacrifices he shudders; he prays with a quivering voice and offers incense with hands that shake; he shows all through that Pythagoras[289]talks nonsense when he says: ‘We reach our best when we draw near to the Gods.’ For it is then that the superstitious are at their miserable worst; the halls and temples of the Gods which they approach are for them dens of bears, lairs of serpents, caverns of monsters of the sea!

X. Hence it comes upon me as a surprise when men say that|F|atheism is impiety, but that superstition is not. Yet Anaxagoras had to answer a charge of impiety for saying that the sun is a stone, whereas no one has called the Cimmerians impious for thinking that there is no sun at all. What do you say? Is the man who recognizes no Gods a profane person, and doesnot he, who takes them for such beings as the superstitious think, hold a far more profane creed? I know that I would rather men said about me that there is not, and never has come|170|into existence, a Plutarch, than that there is a man Plutarch unstable, shifty, readily provoked, revengeful over accidents, aggrieved at trifles; who, if you leave him out of your supper party, if you are busy and do not come to the door, if you pass him without a greeting, will cling to your flesh like a leech and gnaw it, or will catch your child, and thrash him to pieces, or will turn some beast, if he keep one, into your crops, and ruin the harvest. When Timotheus was singing of Artemis at Athens in the words:

Wanderer, frenzied one, wild and inebriate!

|B|Cinesias the composer rose from his place with ‘Such a daughter be thine!’ Yet the like of this, and worse things too, do the superstitious hold about Artemis:

She would burn a hanging woman,She a mother in her pangs;She would bring pollution to youFrom the chamber of a corpse.In the crossways swoop upon you,Fix on you a murderer’s shame.[290]

She would burn a hanging woman,

She a mother in her pangs;

She would bring pollution to you

From the chamber of a corpse.

In the crossways swoop upon you,

Fix on you a murderer’s shame.[290]

Nor will their views about Apollo, or Hera, or Aphrodite be a whit more decent, they fear and tremble at them all. Yet what was there in Niobe’s blasphemy about Latona, compared to what|C|superstition has persuaded fools to believe about that goddess, how she felt herself insulted and actually shot down the poor woman’s

Six daughters, beauteous all, six blooming sons,[291]

so greedy of calamities for another woman, so implacable! For if the Goddess had really been full of wrath and resentment ofwickedness, and felt aggrieved at insults to herself, disposed to resent, rather than to smile at human folly and ignorance, why then she ought to have shot down those who lyingly imputed to her such savage bitterness, in speech or books. Certainly we denounce the bitterness of Hecuba as savage and beastly:|D|

In whose mid-liver I my teeth would set,And cling and gnaw.[292]

In whose mid-liver I my teeth would set,

And cling and gnaw.[292]

But of the Syrian Goddess superstitious men believe that if one eats sprats or anchovies, she munches his shins, fills his body with sores, and rots his liver.[293]

XI. How then? Is it impious to say bad things about the Gods, but not impious to think them? Or is it the thought of the blasphemer which makes his voice amiss? We men scout abusive language as the outward sign of ill-feeling. We reckon for enemies those who speak ill of us because we think that they also think ill. Now you see the sort of things which the superstitious think about the Gods; they take them to be capricious,|E|faithless, shifty, revengeful, cruel, vexed about trifles, all reasons why the superstitious must perforce hate and fear the Gods. Of course he does, when he thinks that they have been, and will be again, authors of his greatest ills. But if he hates and fears the Gods, he is their enemy. Yet he worships, and sacrifices, and sits before their shrines. And no wonder; men salute tyrants also, and court them, and set up their figures in gold. But ‘in silence’ they hate them, ‘wagging the head’.[294]Hermolaus remained Alexander’s courtier, Pausanias served on Philip’s|F|bodyguard, Chaereas on that of Caligula; but each of them would say while he attended on his master

Sure thou shouldst rue it if my arm were strong.[295]

The atheist thinks there are no Gods, the superstitious wishes that there were none; he believes against his will, for he fears to disbelieve. And yet, as Tantalus would gladly slip from beneath the stone swinging over his head, so is it with the superstitious and his fear, a pressure no less sore. He would reckon the atheist’s mood a blessed one, for there is freedom in it. As things are, the atheist is quite clear of superstition; the superstitious is at heart an atheist, only too weak to believe what he wishes to believe about the Gods.

|171|XII. Again, the atheist is in no sense responsible for superstition, whereas superstition provides atheism with a principle which brings it into being, and then an apology for its existence which is neither true nor honest, but is in a sense colourable. For it is not because they find anything to blame in sky, or stars, or seasons, or cycles of the moon, or movements of the sun around the earth, ‘those artificers of day and night’,[296]or espy confusion and disorder in the breeding of animals or the increase of fruits, that they condemn the universe to godlessness. No! Superstition and its ridiculous doings and emotions, words,|B|gestures, juggleries, sorceries, coursings around and beatings of cymbals, purifications which are impure, and cleansings which are filthy, weird illegal punishments and degradations at temples—these give certain persons a pretext for saying that better no Gods than Gods, if Gods accept such things and take pleasure in them, Gods so violent, so petty, so sore about trifles.

XIII. Were it not better then for those Gauls[297]and Scythians to have had no notion at all about Gods, neither imagination nor record of them, than to think that there are Gods who take|C|pleasure in the blood of slaughtered men and who accept that as the supreme form of solemn sacrifice? What? Were it not an advantage to the Carthaginians to have had a Critias or a Diagoras for their first lawgiver and to recognize neither Godnor daemon, than to offer such sacrifices as they did offer to Cronus?[298]It was not the case which Empedocles puts against those who sacrifice animals:

Father, uplifting his son, not marking the change of the body,Prays as he takes the dear life, poor fool.

Father, uplifting his son, not marking the change of the body,

Prays as he takes the dear life, poor fool.

Knowing and recognizing their own children, they used to sacrifice them—nay, the childless would buy children from poor parents and cut their throats as though they were lambs or chickens—, and the mother would stand by dry-eyed and with|D|never a groan. If she should groan or weep, she would have to lose the merit, and the child was sacrificed all the same, while the whole space in front of the shrine was filled with the rattle of drums and the din of fifes, in order that the sound of the wailing might be drowned. Suppose that Typhons, say, or Giants, had turned out the Gods and were our rulers, in what sacrifices but these would they delight, or what other solemnities would they require? Amestris,[299]wife of Xerxes, buried twelve men alive, as her own offering to Hades, who, as Plato[300]tells us, is|E|kind and wise and detains souls by persuasion and reason, and so has been named ‘Hades’. Xenophanes,[301]the natural philosopher, when he saw the Egyptians beating their breasts and wailing at their feasts, gave them a home lesson: ‘If these are Gods, do not mourn them; if men, why sacrifice to them?

XIV. There is no sort of disease so capricious and so varied in emotions, such a medley of opposite, or rather conflicting, opinions, as is that of superstition. We must flee from it then, but as safety and advantage point, not like men who run for their lives from robbers or beasts or fire, never looking round or using their heads, and plunge into pathless wastes with pits and|F|precipices. For that is how some flee from superstition and plunge into a rough and flinty atheism, overleaping Piety seated in the middle space.

APPENDIXA SHORT DISCOURSE OF SUPERSTITION

The true Notionof Superstitionwell express’d byΔεισιδαιμονία, i.e.an over-timorous and dreadful apprehension of the Deity.

A false opinion of the Deity the true cause and rise ofSuperstition.

Superstitionis most incident to such as Converse not with the Goodness of God, or are conscious to themselves of their own unlikeness to him.

Right apprehensions of God beget in man a Nobleness and Freedome of Soul.

Superstition,though it looks upon God as an angry Deity, yet it counts him easily pleas’d with flattering Worship.

Apprehensions of a Deity and Guilt meeting together are apt to excite Fear.

Hypocrites to spare their Sins seek out waies to compound with God.

Servile and Superstitious Fear is encreased by Ignorance of the certain Causes of Terrible Effects in Nature, &c., as also by frightful Apparitions of Ghosts and Spectres.

A further Consideration ofSuperstitionas a Composition of Fear and Flattery.

A fuller Definition ofSuperstition,according to the Sense of the Ancients.

Superstitiondoth not alwaies appear in the same Form, but passes from one Form to another, and sometimes shrouds it self under Forms seemingly Spiritual and more refined.

Of Superstition

Having now done with what we propounded as aPrefaceto our followingDiscourses, we should now come to treat of themain Heads and Principles of Religion. But before we doe that, perhaps it may not be amiss to enquire into some of thoseAnti-Deitiesthat are set up against it, the chief whereof areAtheismandSuperstition; which indeed may seeme to comprehend in them all kind of Apostasy and Praevarication from Religion. We shall not be over-curious to pry into such foule and rotten carkasses as these are too narrowly, or to make any subtile anatomy of them; but rather enquire a litle into the Original and Immediate Causes of them; because it may be they may be nearer of kin then we ordinarily are aware of, while we see their Complexions to be so vastly different the one from the other.

And first of all forSuperstition(to lay aside our Vulgar notion of it which much mistakes it) it is the same with that Temper of Mind which the Greeks call Δεισιδαιμονία, (for so Tully frequently translates that word, though not so fitly and emphatically as he hath done some others:) It importsan overtimorous and dreadfull apprehension of the Deity; and therefore withHesychiusΔεισιδαιμονία and Φοβοθεΐα are all one, and Δεισιδαίμων is by him expounded ὁ εἰδωλολάτρης, ὁ εὐσεβής, καὶ δειλὸς παρὰ θεοῖς,an Idolater, and also one that is very prompt to worship the Gods, but withall fearfull of them. And thereforethe true Cause and Rise of Superstitionis indeed nothing else buta false opinionof the Deity, that renders him dreadfull and terrible, as being rigorous and imperious; that which represents him as austere and apt to be angry, but yet impotent, and easy to be appeased again by someflattering devotions, especially if performed with sanctimonious shewes and a solemn sadness of Mind. And I wish that that Picture of God which some Christians have drawn of him, wherein Sowreness and Arbitrariness appear so much, doth not too much resemble it. According to this sense, Plutarch hath well defined it in his book περὶ δεισιδαιμονίαςin this manner, δόξαν ἐμπαθῆ καὶ δέους ποιητικὴν ὑπόληψιν οὖσαν ἐκταπεινοῦντος καὶ συντρίβοντος τὸν ἄνθρωπον, οἰόμενον τε εἶναι θεοὺς εἶναι δὲ λυπηροὺς καὶ βλαβερούς,a strong passionate Opinion, and such a Supposition as is productive of a fear debasing and terrifying a man with the representation of the Gods as grievous and hurtfull to Mankind.

Such men as these converse not with theGoodnessof God, and therefore they are apt to attribute their impotent passions and peevishness of Spirit to him. Or it may be because some secret advertisements of their Consciences tell them howunlikethey themselves areto God, and how they have provoked him; they are apt to be as much displeased with him as too troublesome to them, as they think he is displeased with them. They are apt to count this Divine Supremacy as but a piece of tyranny that by its Soveraign Will makes too great encroachments upon their Liberties, and that which will eat up all their Right and Property; and therefore are lavishly afraid of him, τὴν τῶν θεῶν ἀρχὴν ὡς τυραννίδα φοβούμενοι σκυθρωπὴν καὶ ἀπαραίτητον,fearing Heaven’s Monarchy as a severe and churlish Tyranny from which they cannot absolve themselves, as the same Author speaks: and therefore he thus discloseth the private whisperings of their minds, ᾅδου τινες ἀνοίγονται πύλαι βαθείαι, καὶ ποταμοῖ πυρὸς ὁμοῦ καὶ στυγὸς ἀπορρῶγες ἀναπετάννυνται, &c.,the broad gates of hell are opened, the rivers of fire and Stygian inundations run down as a swelling flood, there is thick darkness crowded together, dreadfull and gastly Sights of Ghosts screeching and howling, Judges and tormentors, deep gulfes and Abysses full of infinite miseries. Thus he. The ProphetEsaygives us this Epitome of their thoughts, chap. 33:The Sinners in Zionare afraid, fearfulness hath surprized the hypocrites: who shall dwell with the devouring fire? who shall dwell with everlasting burnings? Though I should not dislike these dreadful and astonishing thoughts of future torment, which I doubt even good men may have cause to press home upon their own spirits, while they find Ingenuity less active, the more to restrain sinne; yet I think it little commends God, and as little benefits us, to fetch all this horror and astonishment from the Contemplations of a Deity, which should alwayes be the most serene and lovely: our apprehensions of the Deity should be such as mightennobleour Spirits, and notdebasethem. A right knowledge of Godwould beget afreedomeandLibertyof Soul within us, and notservility; ἀρετῆς γὰρ ἐλπὶς ὁ Θεός εστιν οὐ δουλείας πρόφασις, as Plutarch hath well observ’d; our thoughts of a Deity should breed in us hopes of Vertue, and not gender to a spirit of bondage.

But that we may pass on. Because this unnaturall resemblance of God as an angry Deity in impure minds, should it blaze too furiously, like the Basilisk would kill with its looks; therefore these Painters use their best arts a little to sweeten it, and render it less unpleasing. And those that fancy God to be most hasty and apt to be displeased, yet are ready also to imagine him so impotently mutable, that his favour may be won again with their uncouth devotions, that he will be taken with their formall praises, and being thirsty after glory and praise and solemn addresses, may, by their pompous furnishing out all these for him, be won to a good liking of them: and thus they represent him to themselves as Lucian, in hisDe Sacrificiis[c. I] speaks too truly, though it may be too profanely, ὡς κολακευόμενον ἥδεσθαι, καὶ ἀγανακτεῖν ἀμελούμενον. And thereforeSuperstitionwill alwaies abound in these things whereby this Deity of their own, made after the similitude of men, may be most gratified, slavishly crouching to it. We will take a view of it in the words ofPlutarch, though what refers to theJews, if it respects more their rites than their Manners, may seem to contain too hasty a censure of them.Superstitionbrings in πηλώσεις, καταβορβορώσεις, σαββατισμούς, ῥίψεις ἐπὶ πρόσωπον, αἰσχρὰς προκαθίσεις, ἀλλοκότους προσκυνήσεις,wallowings in the dust, tumblings in the mire, observations of Sabbaths, prosternations, uncouth gestures, and strange rites of worship. Superstition is very apt to think that Heaven may be bribed with such false-hearted devotions; as Porphyrie,Lib.2, περὶ ἀποχῆς, hath well explained it by this, that it is ὑπόληψις τοῦ δεκάζειν δύνασθαι τὸ θεῖον,an apprehension that a man may corrupt and bribe the Deity; which (as he there observes) was the Cause of all those bloudy sacrifices and of some inhumane ones among the Heathen men, imagining διὰ τῶν θυσιῶν ἐξωνεῖσθαι τὴν ἁμαρτίαν like him in the Prophet that thought by the fruit of his body and the firstlings of his flock to expiate the sinne of his Soul.Micah6.

But it may be we may seeme all this while to have made tooTragicall a Description ofSuperstition; and indeed one Author whom we have all this while had recourse to, seemes to have set it forth, as anciently Painters were wont to doe those pieces in which they would demonstrate most their own skill; they would not content themselves with the shape of one Body onely, but borrowed severall parts from severall Bodies as might most fit their design and fill up the picture of that they desired chiefly to represent.Superstitionit may be looks not so foul and deformed in every Soul that is dyed with it, as he hath there set it forth, nor doth it every where spread it self alike: this πάθος that shrowds it self under the name ofReligion, wilvariouslydiscover it self as it is seated in Minds of avarioustemper, and meets withvariety of matterto exercise it self about.

We shall therefore a little further inquire into it, and what the Judgments of the soberest men anciently were of it; the rather that a learned Author of our own seems unwilling to own that Notion of it which we have hitherto out ofPlutarchand others contended for; who though he have freed it from that gloss which the late Ages have put upon it, yet he may seem to have too strictly confined it to a Cowardly Worship of the ancient Gentile Daemons, as ifSuperstition and Polytheismwere indeed the same thing, whereasPolytheismorDaemon-worshipis but one branch of it, which was partly observed by the learnedCasaubonin his Notes upon that Chapter ofTheophrastusπερὶ δεισιδαιμονίας, when it is described to be δειλία πρὸς τὸ δαιμόνιον, which he thus interprets, Theophrastusvoceδαιμόνιονet Deos et Daemones complexus est, et quicquid divinitatis esse particeps malesana putavit antiquitas. And in this sense it was truly observed byPetronius Arbiter,

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