SUPERSTITION (DE SUPERSTITIONE) INTRODUCTION 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 excellent readings.a Only one passage, a quotation (170 b), presents serious difficulty, and of this Professor Goodwin remarked: As to the original Greek, hardly a word can be made out with certainty. 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. In spite of the fact that Pohlenz in his preface to Vol. I. (Leipzig, 1925) of the Moralia (p. xiv) uses these words: Codicem Paris D e recensione libidinosissima ortum ! Paton, who edited this essay, accepts the readings of D a good part of the time, and his edition would have been more intelligible had he accepted them more often. 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. Cf. Plutarch, Life of Alexander , chap. lxxv. (p. 706 B) and Life of Camillus , chap. vi. (p. 132 C). 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. Aimed at the theories of Epicurus, and possibly of Democritus. 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. Aimed at the Stoics, who referred all qualities to the body. Cf. Plutarch, Moralia , 1084 A. This piece of ignorance is disgraceful, perhaps, but it is not worthy of wailings or lamentations. But consider judgements and assumptions that are like this: Poor virtue! A mere name thou art, I find, But I did practise thee as real! Author unknown; cf. Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 910, Adespota, No. 374. and thereby I gave up wrongdoing which is productive of wealth, and licentiousness which begets every sort of pleasure. These it is right and proper that we pity, and at the same time loathe, because their presence engenders many distempers and emotions, like maggots and grubs, in men’s souls. 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 be found pride, loftiness, and exaltation, owing to their uplifting power; and no one of them, we might say, is destitute of an impulse to activity. But this general complaint may be made against every one of the emotions, that by their urgings to be up and doing they press hard upon the reasoning power and strain it. But fear alone, lacking no less in boldness than in power to reason, keeps its irrationality impotent, helpless, and hopeless. It is on this ground that the power of fear to tie down the soul, and at the same time to keep it awake, has come to be named both terror and awe. The derivations of terror from tie, and awe from awake are not more fanciful than those in which Plutarch indulges. 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, Cf. Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea , iii. 7, and Pliny, Natural History , ii. 80 (195). 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. Euripides, Orestes , 211-12. Superstition does not give one a right to say this; for superstition alone makes no truce with sleep, and never gives the soul a chance to recover its breath and courage by putting aside its bitter and despondent notions regarding God; but, as it were in the place of torment of the impious, so in the sleep of the superstitious their malady calls up fearful images, and horrible apparitions and divers forms of punishment, and, by keeping the unhappy soul on the rack, chases it away from sleep by its dreams, lashed and punished by its own self as if by another, and forced to comply with dreadful and extraordinary behests. When, later, such persons arise from their beds, they do not contemn nor ridicule these things, nor realize that not one of the things that agitated them was really true, but, trying to escape the shadow of a delusion that has nothing bad at the bottom, during their waking hours they delude and waste and agitate themselves, putting themselves into the hands of conjurors and impostors who say to them: If a vision in sleep is the cause of your fear And the troop of dire Hecate felt to be near, Author unknown; cf. Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 910, Adespota, No. 375. then call in the old crone who performs magic purifications, dip yourself in the ocean, and sit down on the ground and spend the whole day there, Greeks from barbarians finding evil ways! Euripides, The Trojan Women , 764. because of superstition, such as smearing with mud, wallowing in filth, immersions, casting oneself down with face to the ground, disgraceful besieging of the gods, and uncouth prostrations. To sing with the mouth aright was the injunction given to the harp-players by those who thought to preserve the good old forms of music; and we hold it to be meet to pray to the gods with the mouth straight and aright, and not to inspect the tongue laid upon the sacrificial offering to see that it be clean and straight, and, at the same time, by distorting and sullying one’s own tongue with strange names and barbarous phrases, to disgrace and transgress the god-given ancestral dignity of our religion. Nor is there lack of humour in what the comic poet Probably some poet of the new Comedy; cf. Kock, Com. Att. Frag. iii. p. 438. 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? But to the superstitious man it is possible to say, The gift of sleep which the gods bestow on us as a time of forgetfulness and respite from our ills; why do you make this an everlastingly painful torturechamber for yourself, since your unhappy soul cannot run away to some other sleep? Heracleitus Diels, Fragmenta der Vorsokratiker , i. p. 95. says that people awake enjoy one world in common, but of those who are fallen asleep each roams about in a world of his own. But the superstitious man enjoys no world in common with the rest of mankind; for neither when awake does he use his intelligence, nor when fallen asleep is he freed from his agitation, but his reasoning power is sunk in dreams, his fear is ever wakeful, and there is no way of escape or removal. 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 the rule of the gods as a sullen and inexorable despotism, where can he remove himself, where can he flee, what country can he find without gods, or what sea? Into what part of the universe shall you steal away and hide yourself, poor wretch, and believe that you have escaped God? There is a law even for slaves who have given up all hope of freedom, that they may demand a sale, and thus exchange their present master for one more mild. But superstition grants no such exchange; and to find a god whom he shall not fear is impossible for him who fears the gods of his fathers and his kin, who shudders at his saviours, and trembles with terror at those gentle gods from whom we ask wealth, welfare, peace, concord, and success in our best efforts in speech and action. 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. From an unknown tragic poet; cf. Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 910, Adespota, No. 376. But how much more dire, think you, is the lot of those for whom there is no escape, no running away, no chance to revolt? For a slave there is an altar to which he can flee, and there are many of our shrines where even robbers may find sanctuary, and men who are fleeing from the enemy, if once they lay hold upon a statue of a god, or a temple, take courage again. These are the very things that most inspire a shuddering fear and dread in the superstitious man, and yet it is in them that those who are in fear of the most dreadful fate place their hopes. Do not drag the superstitious man away from his shrines, for it is in them that he suffers punishment and retribution. What need to speak at length? In death is the end of life for all men, From Demosthenes, Or. xviii. ( On the Crown) , 97; quoted again in Moralia , 333 C. 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.