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Such are the characteristics of superstition in undesired and critical (as they are called) circumstances and occasions, but it is not one bit better than atheism even under pleasurable conditions. The pleasantest things that men enjoy are festal days and banquets at the temples, initiations and mystie rites, and prayer and adoration of the gods. Note that the atheist on these occasions gives way to insane and sardonic laughter at such ceremonies, and remarks aside to his cronies that people must cherish a vain and silly conceit to think that these rites are performed in honour of the gods; but with him no harm is done save this. On the other hand the superstitious man, much as he desires it, is not able to rejoice or be glad: The city is with burning incense filled; Full too of joyous hymns and doleful groans Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, 4; quoted also in Moralia, 95 C, 445 D, and 623 C. is the soul of the superstitious man. When the garland is on his head he turns pale, he offers sacrifice and feels afraid, he prays with quavering voice, with trembling hands he sprinkles incense, and, in a word, proves how foolish are the words of Pythagoras, Cf.Moralia, 413 B. who said that we reach our best when we draw near to the gods. For that is the time when the superstitious fare most miserably and wretchedly, for they approach the halls or temples of the gods as they would approach bears’ dens or snakes’ holes or the haunts of monsters of the deep.
