superstitious man wishes there were none;[340] the former is an Atheist pure and simple, while the latter is an Atheist who professes to believe because he has not the moral courage to utter his secret desires. And, as in the individual mind Superstition involves Atheism, so historically the latter has developed out of the former. The Epicureans were Atheists, not because they did not perceive the splendour and perfection of the universe, but because they desired to deliver humanity from the thraldom which Superstition had cast about it—from its ridiculous passions and actions, its spells of speech and motion, its magic and witchcraft, its charmed circles and drum-beating, its impure purifications and its filthy cleansings, its barbaric and unlawful penances and its self-torturings at holy shrines. If these practices are pleasant to the gods, mankind is no better off than if the administration of the world were in the hands of the Typhons or the Giants. But no disease is so difficult to cope with as Superstition. We must fly from it, but we must so fly from it that we do not run into the other extreme. “_Aussi y en a il qui fuyans la Superstition, se vont ruer et precipiter en la rude et pierreuse impieté de l’atheisme, en sautant par dessus la vraye Religion, qui est assise au milieu entre les deux._” Such is a brief account of the contents of this famous tract. One thing becomes clear from its perusal, the fact that the advantage is altogether regarded as on the side of Atheism. Amyot, from whose translation we have taken its concluding sentence, sounds a note of serious alarm in a prefatory note to his version: “_Ce traicté est dangereux à lire, et contient une doctrine fausse: Car il est certain que la Superstition est moins mauvaise, et approche plus pres du milieu de la vraye Religion, que ne fait l’Impieté et Atheisme._” Others have followed Amyot in his view of this “dangerous” treatise; while Plutarch has not been without his champions against those who have thus accused him of irreligion.[341] So far as concerns the views expounded in the treatise, it appears to us that the alarm of Amyot is justified. But Amyot, who knew his Plutarch well, should have observed that there is a note of rhetoric in this work which is totally different from the teacher’s usually quiet and unimpassioned method of argument. There is an emphasis, an exaggeration, of everything that tells against the victim of Superstition, a restraint, a gentleness in minimizing the faults which could have been made into a serious indictment against Atheism. This, as we know, is not Plutarch’s favourite method of discussion. In ordinary circumstances an Epicurean would have attacked Superstition, a Stoic would have inveighed against Atheism, and an Academic friend of Plutarch’s would have taken the judicial mean. As a matter of fact, however, Plutarch—and he connects his own name with the argument in the most emphatic manner—assumes a