Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/406

384 such things as these do please the gods! Setting this aside, there is no harm at all in him. As for the superstitious person, willing he is, but not able, to joy and take pleasure: for his heart is much like unto that city which Sophocles describeth in these verses:

Which at one time is full of incense sweet, Resounding mirth with loud triumphant song, And yet the same doth shew in every street All signs of grief, with plaints and groans among,

he looketh with a pale face, under his chaplet of flowers upon his head; he sacrificeth, and yet quaketh for fear; he maketh his prayers with a trembling voice; he putteth incense into the fire, and his hand shaketh withal; to be short, he maketh the speech or sentence of Pythagoras to be vain and foolish, who was wont to say: That we are then in best case when we approach unto the gods and worship them. For verily even then it is when superstitious people are most wretched and miserable, to wit, when they enter into the temples and sanctuaries of the gods, as if they went into the dens of bears, holes of serpents and dragons, or caves of whales and such monsters of the sea. I marvel much, therefore, at them who call the miscreance and sin of atheists impiety, and give not that name rather to superstition. And yet Anaxagoras was accused of impiety; for that he held and said that the sun was a stone: whereas never man yet called the Cimmerians impious or godless because they suppose and believe there is no sun at all.

What say you then? Shall he who thinketh that there be no gods at all be taken for a profane person and excommunicate? and shall not he who believeth them to be such as superstitious folk imagine them, be thought infected with more impious and wicked opinions? For mine own part, I would be better pleased and content if men should say of me thus: There neither is nor ever was in the world a man named Plutarch, than to give out of me and say: Plutarch is an unconstant man, variable, choleric, full of revenge for the least occasion that is, or displeased and given to grieve for a small matter; who, if when you invite others to supper, he be left out and not bidden, or if upon some business you be let and hindered, so that you come not to his door for to visit him, or otherwise do not salute and speak unto him friendly, will be ready to eat your heart with salt, to set upon you with his fangs, and bite you, will not stick to catch up one of your little babes and worry him, or will keep some mischievous wild beast of purpose to put into your