The Essays of Francis Bacon/XVII Of Superstition

by Francis Bacon

XVII. Of Superstition.^[1]

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^[2] saith well to that purpose: Surely (saith he) I had rather a great deal men should say there is 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;^[3] as the poets speak of Saturn.^[4] 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,^[5] 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.^[6] Therefore atheism did never perturb^[7] 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^[8] 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,^[9] where the doctrine of the schoolmen bare great sway, that the schoolmen were like astronomers, which did feign eccentrics^[10] and epicycles,^[11] and such engines^[12] of orbs, to save the phænomena; though they knew there were no such things;^[13] 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 whole some 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.

1. This Essay is omitted in the Italian translation. S.
2. Plutarch, born about 46 A.D., Greek historian, author of forty-six 'Parallel Lives' of Greeks and Romans. An excellent translation, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans was made from the French of Amyot, by Thomas North, in Bacon's youth, 1579. North's Plutarch was Shakspere's store-house of classical knowledge.
3. The quotation is from 'Plutarch's Morals,' Of Superstition or Indiscreet Devotion. 10. Plutarch's Miscellanies and Essays. Vol. I. Edited by W. W. Goodwin. With an Introduction by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
4. Saturn has been identified with the Greek Cronos. He was the youngest of the Titans, children of Sky (Uranus) and Earth (Gaea). Sky and Earth foretold to Cronos that he would be deposed by one of his own children, so he swallowed them one after another as soon as they were born. Cronos was confounded with Chronos, Time, and the myth then comes to explain the tendency of time to destroy whatever it has brought into existence.
5. Natural piety. Morality.
6. "Sickness and sorrows come and go, but a superstitious soule hath no rest." Robert Burton. The Anatomy of Melancholy. Partition 3. Section 4. Member 1. Subsection 3.
7. Perturb. To disturb greatly; to unsettle; to confuse.

   "What folk ben ye that at myn horn comynge
   Pertourben so my feste with cryinge?"
   

   Chaucer. The Knightes Tale. ll. 47–48.
8. Civil. Tranquil, well-governed, orderly.

   "the round-up roared world
   Should have shook lions into civil streets,
   And citizens to their dens."
   

   Shakspere. Antony and Cleopatra. v. 1.
9. The Council of Trent, summoned to meet at Trent in the Austrian Tyrol, March 15, 1545, was the parting of the ways between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.
10. Eccentric. A circle not having the same centre as another.
11. Epicycle. A little circle whose centre is on the circumference of a greater circle.
12. Engine. Artifice, contrivance, device.

    "Nor did he scape
    By all his engines, but was headlong sent
    With his industrious crew to build in hell."
    

    Milton. Paradise Lost. I. 749–751.
13. "Some pleasant wits said, that if the Astrologers, not knowing the true causes of the celestiall motions, to salue the appearances, have invented Eccentriques and Epicicles, it was no wonder if the Councel, desiring to salue the appearances of the supercelestiall motions, did fall into excentricitie of opinions." The Historie of the Councel of Trent. Nathanael Brent. II. 227. Translated from Fra Paolo Sarpi's Historia del Concilio Tridentino.