as tumbling in mire, rolling themselves in dunghills, keeping of
Sabbaths, monstrous prostrations, long and obstinate sittings in a
place, and vile and abject adorations, and all for vain superstition!
They that were careful to preserve good singing used to direct the
practisers of that science to sing with their mouths in their true and
proper postures. Should not we then admonish those that would address
themselves to the heavenly powers to do that also with a true and
natural mouth, lest, while we are so solicitous that the tongue of a
sacrifice be pure and right, we distort and abuse our own with silly
and canting language, and thereby expose the dignity of our divine
and ancient piety to contempt and raillery? It was not unpleasantly
said somewhere by the comedian to those that adorned their beds with
the needless ornaments of silver and gold: Since the Gods have given
us nothing gratis except sleep, why will you make that so costly? It
might as well be said to the superstitious bigot: Since the Gods have
bestowed sleep on us, to the intent we may take some rest and forget
our sorrows, why will you needs make it a continual irksome tormentor,
when you know your poor soul hath ne’er another sleep to betake herself
to? Heraclitus saith: They who are awake have a world in common amongst
them; but they that are asleep are retired each to his own private
world. But the frightful visionary hath ne’er a world at all, either
in common with others or in private to himself; for neither can he use
his reason when awake, nor be free from his fears when asleep; but he
hath his reason always asleep, and his fears always awake; nor hath he
either an hiding-place or refuge.
4. Polycrates was formidable at Samos, and so was Periander at Corinth;
but no man ever feared either of them that had made his escape to an
equal and free government. But he that dreads the divine government, as
a sort of inexorable and implacable tyranny, whither can he remove?
Whither can he fly? What land, what sea can he find where God is not?
Wretched and miserable man! in what corner of the world canst thou so
hide thyself, as to think thou hast now escaped him? Slaves are allowed
by the laws, when they despair of obtaining their freedom, to demand
a second sale, in hopes of kinder masters. But superstition allows of
no change of Gods; nor could he indeed find a God he would not fear,
that dreads his own and his ancestors’ guardians, that quivers at his
preservers and benign patrons, and that trembles and shakes at those of
whom we ask wealth, plenty, concord, peace, and direction to the best
words and actions. Slaves again account it their misfortune to become
such, and can say,—
Both man and wife in direful slavery,
And with ill masters too! Fate’s worst decree!
But how much less tolerable, think you, is their condition, that can
never possibly run away, escape, or desert? A slave may fly to an
altar, and many temples afford sanctuary to thieves; and they that are
pursued by an enemy think themselves safe if they can catch hold on a
statue or a shrine. But the superstitious fears, quivers, and dreads
most of all there, where others when fearfullest take greatest courage.
Never hale a superstitious man from the altar. It is his place of
torment; he is there chastised. In one word, death itself, the end of
life, puts no period to this vain and foolish dread; but it transcends
those limits, and extends its fears beyond the grave, adding to it the
imagination of immortal ills; and after respite from past sorrows, it
fancies it shall next enter upon never-ending ones. I know not what
gates of hell open themselves from beneath, rivers of fire together
with Stygian torrents present themselves to view; a gloomy darkness
appears full of ghastly spectres and horrid shapes, with dreadful
aspects and doleful groans, together with judges and tormentors, pits
and caverns, full of millions of miseries and woes. Thus does wretched
superstition bring inevitably upon itself by its fancies even those
calamities which it has once escaped.
5. Atheism is attended with none of this. True indeed, the ignorance
is very lamentable and sad. For to be blind or to see amiss in matters
of this consequence cannot but be a fatal unhappiness to the mind, it
being then deprived of the fairest and brightest of its many eyes,
the knowledge of God. Yet this opinion (as hath been said) is not
necessarily accompanied with any disordering, ulcerous, frightful,
or slavish passion. Plato thinks the Gods never gave men music, the
science of melody and harmony, for mere delectation or to tickle the
ear, but in order that the confusion and disorder in the periods and
harmonies of the soul, which often for want of the Muses and of grace
break forth into extravagance through intemperance and license, might
be sweetly recalled, and artfully wound up to their former consent and
agreement.
No animal accurst by Jove
Music’s sweet charms can ever love,[98]
saith Pindar. For all such will rave and grow outrageous straight. Of
this we have an instance in tigers, which (as they say), if they hear
but a tabor beat near them, will rage immediately and run stark mad,
and in fine tear themselves in pieces. They certainly suffer the less
inconvenience of the two, who either through defect of hearing or utter
deafness are wholly insensible of music, and therefore unmoved by it.
It was a great misfortune indeed to Tiresias, that he wanted sight to
see his friends and children; but a far greater to Athamas and Agave,
to see them in the shape of lions and bucks. And it had been happier
for Hercules, when he was distracted, if he could have neither seen nor
known his children, than to have used like the worst of enemies those
he so tenderly loved.
6. Well then, is not this the very case of the atheist, compared with
the superstitious? The former sees not the Gods at all, the latter
believes that he really sees them; the former wholly overlooks them,
but the latter mistakes their benignity for terror, their paternal
affection for tyranny, their providence for cruelty, and their frank
simplicity for savageness and brutality.
Again, the workman in copper, stone, and wax can persuade such that
the Gods are in human shape; for so they make them, so they draw them,
and so they worship them. But they will not hear either philosophers
or statesmen that describe the majesty of the Divinity as accompanied
by goodness, magnanimity, benignity, and beneficence. The one
therefore hath neither a sense nor belief of that divine good he might
participate of; and the other dreads and fears it. In a word, atheism
is an absolute insensibility to God (or _want of passion_), which does
not recognize goodness; while superstition is a blind heap of passions,
which imagine the good to be evil. They are afraid of their Gods, and
yet run to them; they fawn upon them, and reproach them; they invoke
them, and accuse them. It is the common destiny of humanity not to
enjoy uninterrupted felicity.
Nor pains, nor age, nor labor they e’er bore,
Nor visited rough Acheron’s hoarse shore,
saith Pindar of the Gods; but human passions and affairs are liable to
a strange multiplicity of uncertain accidents and contingencies.
7. Consider well the atheist, and observe his behavior first in things
not under the disposal of his will. If he be otherwise a man of good
temper, he is silent under his present circumstances, and is providing
himself with either remedies or palliatives for his misfortunes.
But if he be a fretful and impatient man, his whole complaint is
against Fortune. He cries out, that nothing is managed here below
either after the rules of a strict justice or the orderly course of a
providence, and that all human affairs are hurried and driven without
either premeditation or distinction. This is not the demeanor of the
superstitious; if the least thing do but happen amiss to him, he
sits him down plunged in sorrow, and raises himself a vast tempest
of intolerable and incurable passions, and presents his fancy with
nothing but terrors, fears, surmises, and distractions, until he hath
overwhelmed himself with groans and fears. He blames neither man, nor
Fortune, nor the times, nor himself; but charges all upon God, from
whom he fancies a whole deluge of vengeance to be pouring down upon
him; and, as if he were not only unfortunate but in open hostility
with Heaven, he imagines that he is punished by God and is now making
satisfaction for his past crimes, and saith that his sufferings are
all just and owing to himself. Again, when the atheist falls sick,
he reckons up and calls to his remembrance his several surfeits and
debauches, his irregular course of living, excessive labors, or
unaccustomed changes of air or climate. Likewise, when he miscarries in
any public administration, and either falls into popular disgrace or
comes to be ill presented to his prince, he searches for the causes in
himself and those about him, and asks,
Where have I erred? What have I done amiss?
What should be done by me that undone is?[99]
But the fanciful superstitionist accounts every little distemper
in his body or decay in his estate, the death of his children, and
crosses and disappointments in matters relating to the public, as
the immediate strokes of God and the incursions of some vindictive
daemon. And therefore he dares not attempt to remove or relieve his
disasters, or to use the least remedy or to oppose himself to them,
for fear he should seem to struggle with God and to make resistance
under correction. If he be sick, he thrusts away the physician; if he
be in any grief, he shuts out the philosopher that would comfort and
advise him. Let me alone, saith he, to pay for my sins: I am a cursed
and vile offender, and detestable both to God and angels. Now suppose
a man unpersuaded of a Divinity in never so great sorrow and trouble,
you may yet possibly wipe away his tears, cut his hair, and force away
his mourning; but how will you come at this superstitious penitentiary,
either to speak to him or to bring him any relief? He sits him down
without doors in sackcloth, or wrapped up in foul and nasty rags; yea,
many times rolls himself naked in mire, repeating over I know not what
sins and transgressions of his own; as, how he did eat this thing and
drink the other thing, or went some way prohibited by his Genius. But
suppose he be now at his best, and laboring under only a mild attack of
superstition; you shall even then find him sitting down in the midst of
his house all becharmed and bespelled, with a parcel of old women about
him, tugging all they can light on, and hanging it upon him as (to use
an expression of Bion’s) upon some nail or peg.
8. It is reported of Teribazus that, being seized by the Persians, he
drew out his scimitar, and being a very stout person, defended himself
bravely; but when they cried out and told him he was apprehended by
the king’s order, he immediately put up his sword, and presented his
hands to be bound. Is not this the very case of the superstitious?
Others can oppose their misfortunes, repel their troubles, and furnish
themselves with retreats, or means of avoiding the stroke of things
not under the disposal of their wills; but the superstitious person,
without anybody’s speaking to him,—but merely upon his own saying
to himself, This thou undergoest, vile wretch, by the direction of
Providence, and by Heaven’s just appointment,—immediately casts away
all hope, surrenders himself up, and shuns and affronts his friends
that would relieve him. Thus do these sottish fears oftentimes convert
tolerable evils into fatal and insupportable ones. The ancient Midas
(as the story goes of him), being much troubled and disquieted by
certain dreams, grew so melancholy thereupon, that he made himself away
by drinking bull’s blood. Aristodemus, king of Messenia, when a war
broke out betwixt the Lacedaemonians and the Messenians, upon some dogs
howling like wolves, and grass coming up about his ancestors’ domestic
altar, and his divines presaging ill upon it, fell into such a fit of
sullenness and despair that he slew himself. And perhaps it had been
better if the Athenian general, Nicias, had been eased of his folly the
same way that Midas and Aristodemus were, than for him to sit still
for fear of a lunar eclipse, while he was invested by an enemy, and so
be himself made a prisoner, together with an army of forty thousand
men (that were all either slain or taken), and die ingloriously. There
was nothing formidable in the inter-position of the earth betwixt the
sun and the moon, neither was there any thing dreadful in the shadow’s
meeting the moon at the proper time: no, the dreadfulness lay here,
that the darkness of ignorance should blind and befool a man’s reason
at a time when he had most occasion to use it.
Glaucus, behold!
The sea with billows deep begins to roll;
The seas begin in azure rods to lie;
A teeming cloud of pitch hangs on the sky
Right o’er Gyre rocks; there is a tempest nigh;[100]
which as soon as the pilot sees, he falls to his prayers and invokes
his tutelar daemons, but neglects not in the mean time to hold to the
rudder and let down the mainyard; and so,
By gathering in his sails, with mighty pain,
Escapes the hell-pits of the raging main.
Hesiod[101] directs his husbandman, before he either plough or sow, to
pray to the infernal Jove and the venerable Ceres, but with his hand
upon the plough-tail. Homer acquaints us how Ajax, being to engage in
a single combat with Hector, bade the Grecians pray to the Gods for
him; and while they were at their devotions, he was putting on his
armor. Likewise, after Agamemnon had thus prepared his soldiers for the
fight,—
Each make his spear to glitter as the sun,
Each see his warlike target well hung on,—
he then prayed,—