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 the _Lives_ and also in
the _Moralia_ where 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
the _Life 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 in
_The 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
the _Discourse on Superstition_ of John Smith, the Cambridge Platonist
(1618-52), here printed as an Appendix to it. Like Bacon, John Smith has
written also a _Discourse 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.