XVII. Of Superstition.[1]
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. Plutarch[2] saith well to that purpose: Surely (saith he) I had rather a great deal men should say there is no such man at all as Plutarch, than that they should say that there was one Plutarch that would eat his children as soon as they were born;[3] as the poets speak of Saturn.[4] And as the contumely is greater towards God, so the danger is greater towards men. Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety,[5] to laws, to reputation, all which may
- ↑ This Essay is omitted in the Italian translation. S.
- ↑ Plutarch, born about 46 A.D., Greek historian, author of forty-six 'Parallel Lives' of Greeks and Romans. An excellent translation, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans was made from the French of Amyot, by Thomas North, in Bacon's youth, 1579. North's Plutarch was Shakspere's store-house of classical knowledge.
- ↑ The quotation is from 'Plutarch's Morals,' Of Superstition or Indiscreet Devotion. 10. Plutarch's Miscellanies and Essays. Vol. I. Edited by W. W. Goodwin. With an Introduction by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
- ↑ Saturn has been identified with the Greek Cronos. He was the youngest of the Titans, children of Sky (Uranus) and Earth (Gaea). Sky and Earth foretold to Cronos that he would be deposed by one of his own children, so he swallowed them one after another as soon as they were born. Cronos was confounded with Chronos, Time, and the myth then comes to explain the tendency of time to destroy whatever it has brought into existence.
- ↑ Natural piety. Morality.
the homely and native intelligence of this nation and land; but we do surpass all nations and peoples in piety and in religion, and in this one wisdom of recognizing that all things are ruled and governed by the power of the immortal gods. M. Tullii Ciceronis Oratio De Haruspicum Responso in P. Clodium in Senatu Habita. Caput ix. 19.
