# The Essays of Francis Bacon/XVII Of Superstition

XVII. Of Superstition.
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 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; 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
* ↑ This Essay is omitted in the Italian translation. S.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ Natural piety. Morality.
* ↑ "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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ Eccentric. A circle not having the same centre as another.
* ↑ Epicycle. A little circle whose centre is on the circumference of a greater circle.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ "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.