ple, when in prosperity, are so over-brimming
with wisdom (however inexperienced they may be), that they take every
offer of advice as a personal insult, whereas in adversity they know not
where to turn, but beg and pray for counsel from every passer-by. No
plan is then too futile, too absurd, or too fatuous for their adoption;
the most frivolous causes will raise them to hope, or plunge them into
despair--if anything happens during their fright which reminds them of
some past good or ill, they think it portends a happy or unhappy issue,
and therefore (though it may have proved abortive a hundred times
before) style it a lucky or unlucky omen. Anything which excites their
astonishment they believe to be a portent signifying the anger of the
gods or of the Supreme Being, and, mistaking superstition for religion,
account it impious not to avert the evil with prayer and sacrifice.
Signs and wonders of this sort they conjure up perpetually, till one
might think Nature as mad as themselves, they interpret her so
fantastically.

Thus it is brought prominently before us, that superstition's chief
victims are those persons who greedily covet temporal advantages; they
it is, who (especially when they are in danger, and cannot help
themselves) are wont with prayers and womanish tears to implore help
from God: upbraiding reason as blind, because she cannot show a sure
path to the shadows they pursue, and rejecting human wisdom as vain; but
believing the phantoms of imagination, dreams, and other childish
absurdities, to be the very oracles of Heaven. As though God has turned
away from the wise, and written His decrees, not in the mind of man but
in the entrails of beasts, or left them to be proclaimed by the
inspiration and instinct of fools, madmen, and birds. Such is the
unreason to which terror can drive mankind!

Superstition, then, is engendered, preserved, and fostered by fear. If
any one desire an example, let him take Alexander, who only began
superstitiously to seek guidance from seers, when he first learned to
fear fortune in the passes of Sysis (Curtius v. 4); whereas after he had
conquered Darius he consulted prophets no more, till a second time
frightened by reverses. When the Scythians were provoking a battle, the
Bactrians had deserted, and he himself was lying sick of his wounds, "he
once more turned to superstition, the mockery of human wisdom, and bade
Aristander, to whom he confided his credulity, inquire the i