Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/216

 another tract, "in which the cause of Superstition was defended against Epicurus." How Plutarch could have accomplished a successful defence without going back on all the arguments in the treatise "on Superstition" will not be clear to a modern reader. It appears to us that Plutarch, having an acute perception of the gross evils inherent in the many superstitious practices of the day, has been disturbed from his usual philosophic pose, and has been carried, by a feeling of almost personal resentment, to draw a picture which was intended to be one-sided, because it was intended to be alarming. Plutarch's Philosophy, his Religion, here touch the vital interests of life, and come to close combat with a gigantic moral evil. What is lost in philosophic detachment is gained in moral fervour, a change of balance which gives quite other than a theoretical interest to those many short sermons in which Plutarch is aux prises with the sins and vices and follies of his day. The main importance of the "De Superstitione" is its contact with practical affairs, and its translation of philosophic and religious conceptions into terms of everyday life. Philosophy and Religion have displayed to Plutarch the Purity, the Unity, the Benevolence of God; it is a question of Ethics to expose and destroy practices which are repellent to this conception of the Divine Nature. Plutarch's