For God is the brave man’s hope, and not the coward’s excuse. The
Jews indeed once sat on their tails,—it being forsooth their Sabbath
day,—and suffered their enemies to rear their scaling-ladders and
make themselves masters of their walls, and so lay still until
they were caught like so many trout in the drag-net of their own
superstition.[103]
9. 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.[104]
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.
10. 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,—