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 [Sidenote: 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 does not 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 [Sidenote: 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!_ [Sidenote: 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 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 [Sidenote: 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 of wickedness, 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: [Sidenote: D] _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, [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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.
[Sidenote: 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, [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 God nor 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._ 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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.
Footnote 262: Polybius (6, 56) points to ‘Deisidaimonia’ as the force which has held the Roman Commonwealth together, and kept the Romans honest.
Footnote 263: See Nauck, p. 910 (Hercules speaks).
Footnote 267: Nauck, p. 910, Fragm. 375 (probably from Aeschylus).
Footnote 270: Fr. 95.
Footnote 271: Nauck, Fragm. adespota, 376.
Footnote 272: Footnote 273: A difficult passage. I follow W.’s suggested restoration.
Footnote 276: Or perhaps ‘that which knows no wrath’.
Footnote 277: Fr. 143, quoted twice elsewhere by Plutarch.
Footnote 278: Footnote 279: Footnote 280: Footnote 281: i.e. as the moon plunges into the shadow of the earth. See p. 269.
Footnote 282: Archilochus, Fr. 54, Bergk.
Footnote 283: Nauck, Fragm. adespota, 377.
Footnote 290: In the main from Wyttenbach’s reconstruction of this desperate passage.
Footnote 293: Cp. Menander, Fragm. of _Demiurgus_, Meineke 4, p. 102.
Footnote 300: Footnote 301: Cp. Arist. _Rhet._ 2, 23, 27, 1400 b 5, where the Eleatae are named.
APPENDIX A SHORT DISCOURSE OF SUPERSTITION By JOHN SMITH THE CONTENTS OF THE ENSUING DISCOURSE i.e. _an over-timorous and dreadful apprehension of the Deity._ _A false opinion of the Deity the true cause and rise of_ Superstition.
Superstition _is 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 of_ Superstition _as a Composition of Fear and Flattery._ _A fuller Definition of_ Superstition, _according to the Sense of the Ancients._ Superstition _doth 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 a _Preface_ to our following _Discourses_, we should now come to treat of the _main Heads and Principles of Religion_. But before we doe that, perhaps it may not be amiss to enquire into some of those _Anti-Deities_ that are set up against it, the chief whereof are ATHEISM and SUPERSTITION; 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 for SUPERSTITION (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 imports _an overtimorous and dreadfull apprehension of the Deity_; and therefore with _Hesychius_ Δεισιδαιμονία 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 therefore _the true Cause and Rise of Superstition_ is indeed nothing else but _a false opinion_ of 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 some _flattering 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 δεισιδαιμονίας in 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 the _Goodness_ of 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 how _unlike_ they themselves are _to 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 Prophet _Esay_ gives us this Epitome of their thoughts, chap. 33: _The Sinners in Zion_ are 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 might _ennoble_ our Spirits, and not _debase_ them. A right knowledge of God would beget a _freedome_ and _Liberty_ of Soul within us, and not _servility_; 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 his _De Sacrificiis_ [c. I] speaks too truly, though it may be too profanely, ὡς κολακευόμενον ἥδεσθαι, καὶ ἀγανακτεῖν ἀμελούμενον. And therefore _Superstition_ will 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 of _Plutarch_, though what refers to the JEWS, if it respects more their rites than their Manners, may seem to contain too hasty a censure of them. _Superstition_ brings 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. _Micah_ 6.
But it may be we may seeme all this while to have made too Tragicall a Description of _Superstition_; 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. _Superstition_ it 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 of _Religion_, wil _variously_ discover it self as it is seated in Minds of a _various_ temper, and meets with _variety of matter_ to 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 of _Plutarch_ and 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 if _Superstition and Polytheism_ were indeed the same thing, whereas _Polytheism_ or _Daemon-worship_ is but one branch of it, which was partly observed by the learned _Casaubon_ in his Notes upon that Chapter of _Theophrastus_ περὶ δεισιδαιμονίας, when it is described to be δειλία πρὸς τὸ δαιμόνιον, which he thus interprets, Theophrastus _voce_ δαιμόνιον _et Deos et Daemones complexus est, et quicquid divinitatis esse particeps malesana putavit antiquitas_. And in this sense it was truly observed by _Petronius Arbiter_, _Primus in orbe Deos fecit Timor_— The whole progeny of the ancient Daemons, at least in the Minds of the Vulgar, sprung out of _Fear_, and were supported by it: though notwithstanding, this Fear, when in a Being void of all true sense of Divine goodness, hath not escaped the censure of _Superstition_ in _Varro’s_ judgment, whose Maxim it was, as S. _Austin_ tells us, _Deum a religioso vereri, a superstitioso timeri_: which distinction _Servius_ seems to have made use of in his Comment upon _Virgil_, _Aeneid_ 6, where the Poet describing the torments of the wicked in hell, he runs out into an Allegoricall exposition of all, it may be too much in favour of _Lucretius_, whom he there magnifies. His words are these, _Ipse etiam Lucretius dicit per eos super quos jamjam casurus imminet lapis_, Superstitiosos _significare, qui inaniter semper verentur, et de Diis et Cœlo et locis superioribus male opinantur; nam_ Religiosi _sunt qui per reverentiam timent_.
But that we may the more fully unfold the _Nature_ of this πάθος, and the effects of it, which are not alwaies of one sort, we shall first premise something concerning the Rise of it.
The _Common Notions_ of a Deity, strongly rooted in Mens Souls, and meeting with the Apprehensions of _Guiltiness_, are very apt to excite the _Servile_ fear: and when men love their own filthy lusts, that they may spare them, they are presently apt to contrive some other waies of appeasing the Deity and compounding with it. Unhallowed minds, that have no inward foundation of true Holiness to fix themselves upon, are easily shaken and tossed from all inward peace and tranquillity; and as the thoughts of some Supreme power above them seize upon them, so they are struck with the lightning thereof into inward affrightments, which are further encreas’d by a vulgar observation of those strange, stupendious, and terrifying Effects in Nature, whereof they can give no certain reason, as Earthquakes, Thundrings, and Lightnings, blazing Comets and other Meteors of a like Nature, which are apt to terrifie those especially who are already unsetled and Chased with an inward sense of guilt, and, as Seneca speaks, _inevitabilem metum ut supra nos aliquid timeremus incutiunt_. _Petronius Arbiter_ hath well described this business for us, _Primus in orbe Deos fecit Timor, ardua cœlo Fulmina cum caderent, discussaque moenia flammis, Atque ictus flagraret Athos_— From hence it was that the _Libri fulgurales_ of the _Romanes_, and other such volumes of _Superstition_, swelled so much, and that the _pulvinaria Deorum_ were so often frequented, as will easily appear to any one a little conversant in _Livy_, who everywhere sets forth this Devotion so largely, as if he himself had been too passionately in love with it.
And though as the _Events_ in Nature began sometimes to be found out better by a discovery of their immediate Natural Causes, so some particular pieces of Superstitious Customs were antiquated and grown out of date (as is well observ’d concerning those _Charms_ and _Februations_ anciently in use upon the appearing of an Eclipse, and some others) yet often affrights and horrours were not so easily abated, while they were unacquainted with the Deity, and with the other mysterious events in Nature, which begot those Furies and unlucky Empusas ἀλάστορας καὶ παλαμναίους δαίμονας, in the weak minds of men. To all which we may adde the frequent _Spectres_ and frightfull _Apparitions_ of Ghosts and _Mormos_: all which extorted such a kind of Worship from them as was most correspondent to such Causes of it. And those Rites and Ceremonies which were begotten by Superstition, were again the unhappy Nurses of it, such as are well described by _Plutarch_ in his _De defect.
Oracul._, Ἑορταὶ καὶ θυσίαι, ὥσπερ ἡμέραι ἀποφράδες, καὶ σκυθρωπαί, ἐν αἷς ὠμοφαγίας, &c. _Feasts and Sacrifices, as likewise observations of unlucky and fatall dayes, celebrated with eating of raw things, lacerations, fastings, and howlings, and many times filthy Speeches in their sacred rites_, and frantick behaviour.
But as we insinuated before, This Root of _Superstition_ diversely branched forth it self, sometimes into _Magick_ and _Exorcismes_, other times into Pædanticall Rites and idle observations of _Things_ and _Times_, as _Theophrastus_ hath largely set them forth in his Tract περὶ δεισιδαιμονίας: in others it displayed itself in inventing as many _new Deities_ as there were severall Causes from whence their affrights proceeded, and finding out many φρικτὰ μυστήρια appropriate to them, as supposing they ought to be worshipt _cum sacro horrore_. And hence it is that we hear of those inhumane and Diabolicall sacrifices called ἀνθρωποθυσίαι, frequent among the old Heathens (as among many others _Porphyry_ in his _De abstinentia_ hath abundantly related) and of those dead mens bones which our Ecclesiastick writers tell us were found in their Temples at the demolishing of them. Sometimes it would express itself in a prodigall way of sacrificing, for which _Ammianus Marcellinus_ (an heathen Writer, but yet one who seems to have been well pleased with the simplicity and integrity of Christian Religion) taxeth _Julian_ the Emperor for Superstition. _Iulianus, Superstitiosus magis quam legitimus sacrorum observator, innumeras sine parsimonia pecudes mactans, ut æstimaretur, si revertisset de Parthis, boves iam defuturos_: like that Marcus Caesar, of whom he relates this common proverb, οἱ λευκοὶ βέες Μάρκῳω τῷ Καίσαρι, ἄν συ νικήσῃς, ἡμεῖς ἀπωλόμεθα. Besides many other ways might be named wherein _Superstition_ might occasionally shew it self.
All which may best be understood, if we consider it a little in that Composition of _Fear_ and _Flattery_ which before we intimated: and indeed _Flattery_ is most incident to _base_ and _slavish_ minds; and when the fear and jealousy of a Deity disquiet a wanton dalliance with sin, and disturb the filthy pleasure of Vice, then this fawning and crouching disposition will find out devices to quiet an angry conscience within, and an offended God without, (though as men grow more expert in this cunning, these fears may in some degree abate). This the ancient Philosophy hath well taken notice of, and therefore well defin’d δεισιδαιμονία by κολακεία, and useth these terms promiscuously. Thus we find Max. Tyrius in his Dissert. 4 concerning the difference between a _Friend_ and a _Flatterer_. ὁ μὲν εὐσεβής, φίλος θεῷ, ὁ δὲ δεισιδαίμων, κόλαξ θεοῦ· καὶ μακάριος ὁ εὐσεβής, ὁ φίλος θεοῦ, δυστυχὴς δὲ ὁ δεισιδαίμων. ὁ μὲν θαρσῶν τῇ ἀρετῇ, πρόσεισι τοῖς θεοῖς ἄνευ δέους· ὁ δὲ ταπεινὸς διὰ μοχθηρίαν, μετὰ πολλοῦ δέους, δύσελπις, καὶ δεδιὼς τοὺς θεοὺς ὥσπερ τοὺς τυράννους. The sense whereof is this, _The Pious man is God’s friend, the Superstitious is a flatterer of God: and indeed most happy and blest is the condition of the Pious man, God’s friend, but right miserable and sad is the state of the Superstitious. The Pious man, emboldened by a good Conscience and encouraged by the sense of his integrity, comes to God without fear and dread: but the Superstitious being sunk and deprest through the sense of his own wickedness, comes not without much fear, being void of all hope and confidence, and dreading the Gods as so many Tyrants._ Thus _Plato_ also sets forth this _Superstitious_ temper, though he mentions it not under that name, but we may know it by a property he gives of it, viz.: _to colloque with Heaven_, Lib. 10, _de Legibus_, where he distinguisheth of Three kinds of Tempers in reference to the Deity, which he then calls πάθη, which are, _Totall Atheism_, which he saies never abides with any man till his Old age; and _Partial Atheism_, which is a Negation of Providence; and a Third, which is a perswasion concerning the Gods ὅτι εὐπαράμυθοί εἰσι θύμασι καὶ εὐχαῖς, _that they are easily won by sacrifices and prayers_, which he after explaines thus, ὅτι παραιτητοί εἰσι τοῖσιν ἀδικοῦσιν, δεχόμενοι δῶρα, &c., _that with gifts unjust men may find acceptance with them_. And this Discourse of _Plato’s_ upon these three kinds of Irreligious πάθη _Simplicius_ seems to have respect to in his comment upon _Epictetus_, cap. 38, which treats about _Right Opinions_ in Religion; and there having pursued the two former of them, he thus states the latter, which he calls ἀθεΐας λόγον as well as the other two, as a conceit θεοὺς παρατρέπεσθαι δώροις, καὶ ἀναθήμασι, καὶ κερματίου διαδόσεσιν, _quod muneribus et donariis et stirpis distributione a sententia deducuntur_, such men making account by their devotions to draw the Deity to themselves, and winning the favour of Heaven, to procure such an indulgence to their lusts as no sober man on earth would give them; they in the meanwhile not considering ὡς μεταμέλειαι, καὶ ἱκετεῖαι, καὶ εὐχαί, καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα, ἀναλογοῦσι τῷ κάλῳ, that _Repentance, Supplications, and Prayers, &c., ought to draw us nearer to God, not God nearer to us; as in a ship, by fastning a Cable to a firm Rock, we intend not to draw the Rock to the Ship, but the Ship to the Rock_. Which last passage of his is therefore the more worthy to be taken notice of, as holding out so large an Extent that this Irreligious temper is of, and of how subtil a Nature. This fond and gross dealing with the Deity was that which made the scoffing _Lucian_ so much sport, who in his Treatise _De Sacrificiis_ tells a number of stories how the Daemons loved to be feasted, and when and how they were entertained, with such devotions which are rather used Magically as Charms and Spells for such as use them, to defend themselves against those Evils which their own Fears are apt perpetually to muster up, and to endeavour by bribery to purchase Heaven’s favour and indulgence, as _Juvenal_ speaks of the Superstitious Aegyptian, _Illius lacrimae mentitaque munera præstant Ut veniam culpae non abnuat, ansere magno Scilicet et tenui popano corruptus Osiris._ Though all this while I would not be understood to condemn too severely all servile fear of God, if it tend to make men avoid true wickedness, but that which settles upon these lees of Formality.
To conclude, Were I to define _Superstition_ more generally according to the ancient sense of it, I would call it _Such an apprehension of God in the thoughts of men, as renders him grievous and burdensome to them, and so destroys all free and cheerfull converse with him; begetting in the stead thereof a forc’d and jejune devotion, void of inward Life and Love._ It is that which discovers itself _Pædantically_ in the worship of the Deity, in anything that makes up but onely the _Body_ or _outward Vesture_ of Religion; though then it may make a mighty bluster; and because it comprehends not the true Divine good that ariseth to the Souls of men from an _internall frame_ of Religion, it is therefore apt to think that all its _insipid devotions_ are as so many _Presents_ offered to the Deity and _gratifications_ of him. How _variously_ Superstition can discover and manifest itself, we have intimated before: To which I shall only adde this, That we are not so well rid of _Superstition_, as some imagine when they have expell’d it out of their Churches, expunged it out of their Books and Writings, or cast it out of their Tongues, by making Innovations in names (wherein they sometimes imitate those old _Caunii_ that _Herodotus_ speaks of, who that they might banish all the forrein Gods that had stollen in among them, took their procession through all their Country, beating and scourging the Aire along as they went;) No, for all this, _Superstition_ may enter into our chambers, and creep into our closets, it may twine about our secret Devotions, and actuate our Formes of belief and Orthodox opinions, when it hath no place else to shroud itself or hide its head in; we may think to flatter the Deity by these, and to bribe it with them, when we are grown weary of more pompous solemnities: nay it may mix it self with a seeming Faith in Christ; as I doubt it doth now in too many, who laying aside all sober and serious care of true Piety, think it sufficient to offer up their Saviour, his Active and Passive Righteousness, to a severe and rigid Justice, to make expiation for those sins they can be willing to allow themselves in.
ON THE FACE WHICH APPEARS ON THE ORB OF THE MOON A DIALOGUE INTRODUCTION Plutarch’s Dialogue on _The Face in the Moon_ is not a scientific treatise, and its author would have disclaimed any intention of writing to advance science. It is discussion for the sake of discussion, the ‘good talk’ of which Plutarch wished that Athens should have no monopoly, any more than she had when the Boeotian Simmias and Cebes were among the trusted friends of Socrates, or, later, when ‘plain living and high thinking’ could be exhibited in lofty perfection in the Theban home of Epaminondas. A mixed company, which includes an astronomer, another mathematician, a literary man, and professed philosophers (there is no Epicurean here), with Lamprias, Plutarch’s brother, for president, discusses the movements and physical nature of the moon, from many points of view. Reference is made throughout to a previous discussion at which Lamprias, and Lucius, another of the speakers, had been present, when a person called ‘Our Comrade’ had dealt faithfully with the Peripatetic view, endorsed by the Stoics, that the moon is not of substance like our earth, but is a fiery or starlike body. This discussion had wandered into mystical theories as to the moon’s office in the birth and death of human souls, and her connexion with ‘daemons’.
Sylla has joined the present company with a myth to relate bearing on these deep subjects, which had come to him at Carthage as a traveller’s tale. Its production is delayed until the end of the Dialogue, which it closes after the manner of a Platonic myth; the phrases with which it is opened and dismissed may be compared with those of the _Gorgias_. This double device, of referring part of the matter to a former conversation (as the _E at Delphi_ is a recollection of an old discourse by Ammonius), and part to a new and strange tale, skilfully relieves this elaborate Dialogue. Some difficulty is caused by the imperfect, or doubtful, condition of the text of the opening chapter, as no complete explanation seems to be given as to the place or time of the former discussion. Probably this abruptness is intentional, but the text requires careful attention.