Of Superstition
by
Francis Bacon
(Essay)
It were better to have no opinion of God at
all than such an opinion as is unworthy of him; for the one is unbelief, the
other is contumely; and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity.
Plutarch saith well to that purpose: "Surely," saith he, "I had
rather a great deal men should say there was no such man at all as Plutarch,
than that they should say that there was one Plutarch, that would eat his
children as soon as they were born:" as the poets speak of Saturn: and, as
the contumely is greater towards God, so the danger is greater towards men. Atheism
leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation:
all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not;
but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the
minds of men: therefore atheism did never perturb states; for it makes men wary
of themselves, as looking no further, and we see the times inclined to atheism
(as the time of Augustus Cæsar) were civil times: but superstition hath been
the confusion of many states, and bringeth in a new "primum mobile,"
that ravisheth all the spheres of government. The master of superstition is the
people, and in all superstition wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted
to practice, in a reversed order. It was gravely said, by some of the prelates
in the council of Trent, where the doctrine of the schoolmen bare great sway,
that the schoolmen were like astronomers, which did feign eccentrics and
epicycles, and such engines of orbs to save phenomena, though they knew there
were no such things; and, in like manner, that the schoolmen had framed a
number of subtle and intricate axioms and theorems, to save the practice of the
church. The causes of superstition are, pleasing and sensual rites and
ceremonies; excess of outward and pharisaical holiness; over great reverence of
traditions, which cannot but load the church; the stratagems of prelates for
their own ambition and lucre; the favouring too much of good intentions, which
openeth the gate to conceits and novelties; the taking an aim at divine matters
by human, which cannot but breed mixture of imaginations; and, lastly,
barbarous times, especially joined with calamities and disasters. Superstition,
without a veil, is a deformed thing: for as it addeth deformity to an ape to be
so like a man, so the similitude of superstition to religion makes it the more
deformed: and, as wholesome meat corrupteth to little worms, so good forms and
orders corrupt into a number of petty observances. There is a superstition in
avoiding superstition, when men think to do best if they go furthest from the
superstition formerly received; therefore care would be had that (as it fareth
in ill purgings) the good be not taken away with the bad, which commonly is
done when the people is the reformer.
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