Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/397

Rh fiends, and furies, which torment the poor and miserable soul; it driveth her out of her quiet repose by her own fearful dreams, wherewith she whippeth, scourgeth and punisheth herself (as if it were) by some other, whose cruel and unreasonable commandments she doth obey; and yet here is not all; for, that which worse is, such superstitious persons, after they be awakened out of their sleep and risen, do not as other men, despise their dreams, and either laugh thereat or take pleasure therein, for that they see there is nothing true in all their visions and illusions which should trouble and terrify them; but being escaped out of the shadow of those false illusions, wherein there is no harm or hurt at all, they deceive and trouble themselves in good earnest, spending their substance and goods infinitely upon magicians, jugglers, enchanters, and such-like deceivers whom they light upon, who bear a man in hand and thus say unto him:

call for an old trot that tends thy backhouse, and plunge thyself in the sea water, and sit a whole day upon the ground,

namely, upon a vain and foolish superstition, enjoining men to begrime and bewray themselves with dirt, to lie and wallow in the mire, to observe sabbaths and cease from work, to lie prostrate and grovelling upon the earth with the face downward, to sit upon the ground in open place, and to make many strange and extravagant adorations.

In times past the manner was, among those especially who would entertain and observe lawful music, to command those that began to play upon the harp or cittern, to sing thereto with a just mouth, to the end they should speak no dishonest thing; and even we also require and think it meet to pray unto the gods with a just and right mouth, and not to pry in the beast sacrificed, to look into the entrails, to observe whether the tongue thereof be pure and right, and in the meantime perverting and polluting our own tongues with strange and absurd names, infecting and defiling the same with barbarous terms, offending thereby the gods, and violating the dignity of that religion which is received from our ancestors and authorised in our own country. The comical poet said pleasantly in one comedy,