NOTES
"Plutarch's teaching is too full of topical inconsistencies to be formalised into a system of Philosophy. But the dominating principle of his teaching, the paramount necessity of finding a sanction and an inspiration for conduct in what the wisdom of the past had already discovered, is so strikingly conspicuous in all his writings that his logical inconsistencies appear, and are, unimportant.
"It is this desire of making the wisdom and traditions of the past available for ethical usefulness which actuates his attempt to reconcile the contradictions, and remove the crudities and inconsistencies, in the three sources of religious knowledge—Philosophy, Law, Tradition. This is the principle which gives his teaching unity, and not any external circumstances of his life, or his attitude in favour of or in opposition to the tenets of any particular school."—Oakesmith, The Religion of Plutarch, 1902.
ON THE ESSAY "OF SUPERSTITION"
"'The profoundest, the most essential and paramount theme of human interest,' says Goethe, 'is the eternal conflict between Atheism and Superstition.' Plutarch's tract is a classical sermon on this text, although, in his presentment of the subject, the mutual antagonism of the two principles receives less emphasis than the hostility which both alike direct against the interests of true Religion. He has no sympathy with any notion similar to that current since his days, in many religious minds, that Superstition is but a mistaken form of Piety, deserving tenderness rather than reprehension; and he maintains that absolute disbelief in God is less mischievous in its effects upon human conduct and character than its opposite extreme of superstitious devotion."—Oakesmith, The Religion of Plutarch, p. 179.
Bacon speaks similarly in his Essay on Superstition: "It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of Him;" and quotes Plutarch in support of his dictum.
Cf. Harnack's paper, "Greek and Christian Piety," in the Hibbert Journal for October 1911.
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