Superstition (intro-4)

Plutarch’s essay on Superstition is, in the main, an attempt to prove that superstition is worse than atheism. Its somewhat impassioned tone savours more of the emotional sermon than of the carefully reasoned discourse, and suggests that it was originally prepared for public presentation.

Wyttenbach was disturbed because in the catalogue of Lamprias, in which this essay is No. 155, the title is given as Περὶ δεισιδαιμονίας πρὸς Ἐπίκουρον, and he thought that this title might refer to some other treatise of Plutarch. The explanation is so simple that the only surprising thing is that it should have escaped a man of Wyttenbach’s acumen. On the first page of the essay are the words, the universe . . . atoms and void . . . assumption is false. Then, as now, librarians and reviewers looked at the first page, and reached their conclusions; so it was only natural that the compiler of the catalogue should conclude that the rest of the book was equally hostile to Epicurus. On the other hand, this affords interesting evidence that the compiler of the catalogue of Lamprias probably had a copy of Plutarch’s works before him when he drew up his list.

The ms. tradition of this essay is better than of many others, and one ms. (D) has preserved many

Mention should be made of a separate edition and a parallel English translation of this essay in a book entitled περὶ δεισιδαιμονίας. Plutarchus and Theophrastus on Superstition with various appendices and a life of Plutarchus. Printed a.d. 1828. (Privately) printed by Julian Hibbert . . . Kentish Town. The translation is very literal, but is sometimes an improvement on that of William Baxter in the translation of Plutarch by Several Hands (London, 1684-94). Intimate and amusing is the preface of the author, who, in his notes, admits that he has never read Plato, but ends his preface with these words: I terminate this my Preface by consigning all Greek Scholars to the special care of Beelzebub.

A spirited defence of this essay (if any defence is needed) may be found in John Oakesmith’s The Religion of Plutarch (London, 1902), chap. ix. pp. 179 ff. [*]

Ignorance and blindness in regard to the gods divides itself at the very beginning into two streams, of which the one produces in hardened characters, as it were in stubborn soils, atheism, and the other in tender characters, as in moist soils, produces superstition.[*] Every false judgement, and especially concerning these matters, is a mischievous thing; but where emotion also enters, it is most mischievous. For every emotion is likely to be a delusion that rankles; and just as dislocations of the joints accompanied by lacerations are hardest to deal with, so also is it with derangements of the soul accompanied by emotion.

A man thinks that in the beginning the universe was created out of atoms and void. [*] His assumption is false, but it causes no sore, no throbbing, no agitating pain.

A man assumes that wealth is the greatest good. This falsehood contains venom, it feeds upon his soul, distracts him, does not allow him to sleep, fills him with stinging desires, pushes him over precipices, chokes him, and takes from him his freedom of speech.

Again, some people think that virtue and vice are corporeal.[*] This piece of ignorance is disgraceful,

Poor virtue! A mere name thou art, I find, But I did practise thee as real![*]

To come now to our subject: atheism, which is a sorry judgement that there is nothing blessed or incorruptible, seems, by disbelief in the Divinity, to lead finally to a kind of utter indifference, and the end which it achieves in not believing in the existence of gods is not to fear them. But, on the other hand, superstition, as the very name (dread of deities) indicates, is an emotional idea and an assumption productive of a fear which utterly humbles and crushes a man, for he thinks that there are gods, but that they are the cause of pain and injury. In fact, the atheist, apparently, is unmoved regarding the Divinity, whereas the superstitious man is moved as he ought not to be, and his mind is thus perverted. For in the one man ignorance engenders disbelief in the One who can help him, and on the other it bestows the added idea that He causes injury. Whence it follows that atheism is falsified reason, and superstition is an emotion engendered from false reason.

Clear it is that all distempers and emotions of the soul are disgraceful, but in some of them are to

Of all kinds of fear the most impotent and helpless is superstitious fear. No fear of the sea has he who does not sail upon it, nor of war he who does not serve in the army, nor of highwaymen he who stays at home, nor of a blackmailer he who is poor, nor of envy he who holds no office, nor of earthquake he who is in Gaul,[*] nor of the lightning-stroke he who is in Ethiopia; but he who fears the gods fears all things, earth and sea, air and sky, darkness and light, sound and silence, and a dream. Slaves in their sleep forget their masters, sleep makes light the chains of prisoners, and the inflammations surrounding wounds, the savage gnawing of ulcers in the flesh, and tormenting pains are removed from those who are fallen asleep: Dear soothing balm of sleep to help my ill, How sweet thy coming in mine hour of need.[*] Superstition does not give one a right to say this;

If a vision in sleep is the cause of your fear And the troop of dire Hecate felt to be near,[*]

Greeks from barbarians finding evil ways! [*]

Nor is there lack of humour in what the comic poet [*] has somewhere said with reference to those who cover their bedsteads with gold and silver:

The one free gift the gods bestow on us. Our sleep, why make its cost to you so much?

A despot much feared in Samos was Polycrates, as was Periander in Corinth, but nobody feared these men after he had removed to a free State governed by its own people. But as for the man who fears

Then again these same persons hold slavery to be a misfortune, and say,

For man or woman ’tis disaster dire Sudden to be enslaved, and masters harsh To get.[*]

What need to speak at length? In death is the end of life for all men, [*] but not the end of superstition; for superstition transcends the limits of life into the far beyond, making fear to endure longer than life, and connecting with death the thought of undying evils, and holding fast to the opinion, at the moment of ceasing from trouble, that now is the beginning of those that never cease. The abysmal gates of the nether world swing open, rivers of fire and offshoots of the Styx are mingled together, darkness is crowded with spectres of many fantastic shapes which beset their victim with grim visages and piteous voices, and, besides these, judges and torturers and yawning gulfs and deep recesses teeming with unnumbered woes. Thus unhappy superstition, by its excess of caution in trying to avoid everything suggestive of dread, unwittingly subjects itself to every sort of dread.