< Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu
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OF SUPERSTITION

77

be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.[1] Therefore atheism did never perturb[2] states; for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking no further: and we see the times inclined to atheism (as the time of Augustus Cæsar) were civil[3] times. But superstition hath been the confusion of many states, and bringeth in a new primum mobile, that ravisheth all the spheres of government. The master of superstition is the people; and in all superstition wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reversed order. It was gravely said by some of the prelates in the council of Trent,[4] where the doctrine of the schoolmen bare great sway, that the schoolmen were like astronomers, which did feign eccentrics[5] and epicycles,[6] and such engines[7] of orbs, to

  1. ↑ "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.
  2. ↑ 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.

  3. ↑ 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.

  4. ↑ 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.
  5. ↑ Eccentric. A circle not having the same centre as another.
  6. ↑ Epicycle. A little circle whose centre is on the circumference of a greater circle.
  7. ↑ 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.

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