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Mention should be made of a separate edition and a parallel English translation of this essay in a book entitled περὶ δεισιδαιμονίας. Plutarchus and Theophrastus on Superstition with various appendices and a life of Plutarchus. Printed a.d. 1828. (Privately) printed by Julian Hibbert . . . Kentish Town. The translation is very literal, but is sometimes an improvement on that of William Baxter in the translation of Plutarch by Several Hands (London, 1684-94). Intimate and amusing is the preface of the author, who, in his notes, admits that he has never read Plato, but ends his preface with these words: I terminate this my Preface by consigning all Greek Scholars to the special care of Beelzebub.
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A spirited defence of this essay (if any defence is needed) may be found in John Oakesmith’s The Religion of Plutarch> (London, 1902), chap. ix. pp. 179 ff. In spite of the fact that Pohlenz in his preface to Vol. I. (Leipzig, 1925) of the Moralia (p. xiv) uses these words: Codicem Paris D e recensione libidinosissima ortum! Paton, who edited this essay, accepts the readings of D a good part of the time, and his edition would have been more intelligible had he accepted them more often.
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Ignorance and blindness in regard to the gods divides itself at the very beginning into two streams, of which the one produces in hardened characters, as it were in stubborn soils, atheism, and the other in tender characters, as in moist soils, produces superstition. Cf. Plutarch, Life of Alexander, chap. lxxv. (p. 706 B) and Life of Camillus, chap. vi. (p. 132 C). Every false judgement, and especially concerning these matters, is a mischievous thing; but where emotion also enters, it is most mischievous. For every emotion is likely to be a delusion that rankles; and just as dislocations of the joints accompanied by lacerations are hardest to deal with, so also is it with derangements of the soul accompanied by emotion.
