How much pleasure comes in this world from hobbies! One man delights in hunting, with all its absurd ceremonies; another has a rage for building; others are chasing after new inventions, hunting for a fifth essence. Others take to gaming and go to ruin with it, but Folly is not quite clear whether to claim these as her children or not. She has no doubt, however, about those who show their folly by superstitious observances in religion, and here, it will be observed, Erasmus' definition of folly gradually shifts. From this point on it begins to slide over into a meaning something more nearly like what we should be inclined to give it. Folly herself cannot be consistent when she comes to religious fraud. Self-deception is a very useful and pleasant thing, but no gentleness of judgment is due to those "who hug the silly though pleasant persuasion that if they see a wooden or painted Polyphemus-Christopher, they will not die that day; or who salute a statue of St. Barbara with a fixed formula of words if they get home safe from a battle; or, if they call upon Saint Erasmus on certain days with candles and prayers, fancy that they will soon get rich. Now they have invented a George-Hercules, like a new Hippolytus, and come precious near worshipping the very horse of him, decked out with breastplates and ornaments." "But what shall I say of those who flatter themselves so sweetly with counterfeit pardons for their crimes, who have measured off the duration of Purgatory without an error as if by a water-clock, into ages, years, months, and days like the multiplication-table?... Now suppose me some tradesman, or soldier, or judge, who by paying out a penny from all his stealings, thinks the whole slough of his life is cleaned out at once--all his perjuries, lusts, drunkennesses, all his quarrels, murders, cheats, treacheries, falsehoods, bought off by a bargain and bought off in such a way that he may now begin over again with a new circle of crimes!... And isn't it much the same thing when the several countries claim for themselves each its special saint with his special function and his special forms of worship?--as, for example, this one is good for the toothache, that one helps women in travail, another restores stolen property; this one shines upon shipwreck and that one takes care of the flocks and so on--for it would be too long a story to go through the whole list. There are some that are good for more things than one and of these especially the virgin mother of God, to whom the mass of men now pay more honour than to the Son." And yet after all, the things men get from the saints are only the appurtenances of Folly. The world is full of fools, yet the priests are glad to get them all for their own profit.