Of Superstition, or Indiscreet Devotion (9-10)

Such then is the behavior of superstition in times of adversity, and in things out of the power of man’s will. Nor doth it a jot excel atheism in the more agreeable and pleasurable part of our lives. Now what we esteem the most agreeable things in human life are our holidays, temple-feasts, initiatings, processionings, with our public prayers and solemn devotions. Mark we now the atheist’s behavior here. ’Tis true, he laughs at all that is done, with a frantic and sardonic laughter, and now and then whispers to a confidant of his, The devil is in these people sure, that can imagine God can be taken with these fooleries:

but this is the worst of his disasters. But now the superstitious man would fain be pleasant and gay, but cannot for his heart. The whole town is filled with odors of incense and perfumes, and at the same time a mixture of hymns and sighs fills his poor soul.[*] He looks pale with a garland on his head, he sacrifices and fears, prays with a faltering tongue, and offers incense with a trembling hand. In a word, he utterly baffles that saying, of Pythagoras, that we are then best when we come near the Gods. For the superstitious person is then in his worst and most pitiful condition, when he approaches the shrines and temples of the Gods.

So that I cannot but wonder at those that charge atheism with impiety, and in the mean time acquit superstition. Anaxagoras was indicted of blasphemy for having affirmed the sun to be a red-hot stone; yet the Cimmerians were never much blamed for denying his being. What? Is he that holds there is no God guilty of impiety, and is not he that describes him as the superstitious do much more guilty? I, for my own part, had much rather people should say of me, that there neither is nor ever was such a man as Plutarch, than they should say: Plutarch is an unsteady, fickle, froward, vindictive, and touchy fellow; if you invite others to sup with you, and chance to leave out Plutarch, or if some business falls out that you cannot wait at his door with the morning salute, or if when you meet with him you don’t speak to him, he’ll fasten upon you somewhere with his teeth and bite the part through, or catch one of your children and cane him, or turn his beast into your corn and spoil your crop. When Timotheus the musician was one day singing at Athens an hymn to Diana, in which among other things was this,—

Mad, raving, tearing, foaming Deity,—

Cinesias, the lyric poet, stood up from the midst of the spectators, and spoke aloud: I wish thee with all my heart such a Goddess to thy daughter, Timotheus. Such like, nay worse, are the conceits of the superstitious about this Goddess Diana:—

Thou dost on the bed-clothes jump,

And there liest like a lump.

Thou dost tantalize the bride,

When love’s charms by thee are tied.

Thou look’st grim and full of dread,

When thou walk’st to find the dead.

Thou down chairs and tables rumbl’st,

When with Oberon thou tumbl’st. [*]

Nor have they any milder sentiments of Apollo, Juno, or Venus; for they are equally scared with them all. Alas! what could poor Niobe ever say that could be so reflecting upon the honor of Latona, as that which superstition makes fools believe of her? Niobe, it seems, had given her some hard words, for which she fairly shot her

Six daughters, and six sons full in their prime;

[*]

so impatient was she, and insatiate with the calamities of another. Now if the Goddess was really thus choleric and vindictive and so highly incensed with bad language, and if she had not the wisdom to smile at human frailty and ignorance, but suffered herself to be thus transported with passion, I much marvel she did not shoot them too that told this cruel story of her, and charged her both in speech and writing with so much spleen and rancor. We oft accuse Queen Hecuba of barbarous and savage bitterness, for having once said in Homer,—

Would God I had his liver ’twixt my teeth;

[*]

yet the superstitious believe, if a man taste of a minnow or bleak, the Syrian Goddess will eat his shins through, fill his body with sores, and dissolve his liver.