Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/398

376 speaking of those who laid their bedsteads thick with gold and silver: Why do you make your sleep dear and costly unto yourselves, which is the only gift that the gods have given us freely? even so may a man very well say (and with great reason) unto those that are superstitious: Seeing that the gods have bestowed upon us sleep, for the oblivion and repose of our miseries, why makest thou it a very hell and place of continual and dolorous torment to thy poor soul, which cannot fly nor have recourse unto any other sleep but that which is troublesome unto thee? Heraclitus was wont to say: That men all the whiles they were awake, enjoyed the benefit of no other world, but that which was common unto all; but when they slept, every one had a world by himself: but surely, the superstitious person hath not so much as any part of the common world, for neither whiles he is awake hath he the true use of reason and wisdom, nor when he sleepeth is he delivered from fear and secured; but one thing or other troubleth him still: his reason is asleep, his fear is always awake; so that neither can he avoid his own harm quite, nor find any means to put it by and turn it off. Polycrates the tyrant was dread and terrible in Samos, Periander in Corinth, but no man feared either the one or the other who withdrew himself into any free city or popular state; as for him who standeth in dread and fear of the imperial power of the gods, as of some rigorous and inexorable tyranny, whither shall he retire and withdraw himself? whither shall he fly? where shall he find a land, where shall he meet with sea, without a god? into what secret part of the world (poor man) wilt thou betake thyself, wherein thou mayst lie close and hidden, and be assured that thou art without the puissance and reach of the gods?

There is a law that provideth for miserable slaves, who being so hardly intreated by their masters, are out of all hope that they shall be enfranchised and made free, namely, that they may demand to be sold again and to change their master, if haply they may by that means come by a better and more easy servitude under another: but this superstition alloweth us not that liberty to change our gods for the better, nay, there is not a god to be found in the world whom a superstitious person doth not dread, considering that he feareth the tutelar gods of his native country, and the very gods protectors of his nativity: he quaketh even before those gods which are known to be saviours propitious and gracious; he trembleth for fear when he thinketh of them at whose hands we crave riches, abundance of goods, concord, peace, and the happy success of the best words and