favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits
where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating
pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's
greedily coveted favours, they are consequently, for the most
part, very prone to credulity.  (2) The human mind is readily
swayed this way or that in times of doubt, especially when
hope and fear are struggling for the mastery, though usually
it is boastful, over-confident, and vain.

(P:3) This as a general fact I suppose everyone knows, though 
few, I believe, know their own nature; no one can have lived
in the world without observing that most people, 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.  (P:4) 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.  (P:5) 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.  (6) Signs and wonders of this sort
they conjure up perpetually, till one might think Nature as
mad as themselves, they interpret her so fantastically.

(P:7) 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. (P:8) As though God had 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!

(P:9) Superstition, then, is engendered, preserved, and fostered by
fear. If anyone desire an example, let him take Alexander, who only
began superstitiously to seek guidance from seers, when he first
learnt 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.  (10) 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 issue of affairs with sacrificed 
victims."  (P:11) Very numerous examples of a like nature might be
cited, clearly showing the fact, that only while under the dominion
of fear do men fall a prey to superstition; that all the portents
ever invested with the reverence of misguided religion are mere
phantoms of dejected and fearful minds; and lastly, that prophets
have most power among the people, and are most formidable to rulers, 
precisely at those times when the state is in most peril.  (12) I
think this is sufficiently plain to all, and will therefore say no
more on the subject.

[P:1] (P:13) The origin of superstition above given affords us a clear
reason for the fact, that it comes to all men naturally, though
some refer its rise to a dim notion of God, universal to mankind,
and also tends to show, that it is no less inconsistent and
variable than other mental hallucinations and emotional impulses,
and further that it can only be maintained by hope, hatred, anger,
and deceit; since it springs, not from reason, but solely from the
more powerful phases of emotion.  (P:14) Furthermore, we may readily
understand how difficult it is, to maintain in the same course men
prone to every form of credulity.  (15) For, as the mass of mankind
remains always at about the same pitch of misery, it never assents
long to any one remedy, but is always best pleased by a novelty
which has not yet proved illusive.

(P:16) This element of inconsistency has been the cause of many
terrible wars and revolutions; for, as Curtius well says
(lib. iv. chap. 10): "The mob has no ruler more potent than
superstition," and is easily led, on the plea of religion, at
one moment to adore its kings as gods, and anon to execrate and
abjure them as humanity's common bane.  (P:17) Immense pains
have therefore been taken to counteract this evil by investing
religion, whether true or false, with such pomp and ceremony,
that it may rise superior to every shock, and be always observed
with studious reverence by the whole people - a system which has
been brought to great perfection by the Turks, for they consider
even controversy impious, and so clog men's minds with dogmatic
formulas, that they leave no room for sound reason, not even
enough to doubt with.

(P:18) But if, in despotic statecraft, the supreme and essential
mystery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask the fear, which
keeps them clown, with the specious garb of religion, so that
men may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety, and count it
not shame but highest honour to risk their blood and their lives
for the vainglory of a tyrant; yet in a free state no more