Plutarch, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
It is no convenience, and the surest proof is that the path costs me something on both sides. I do not stand halfway between the two errors as a man stands halfway between two friends he is unwilling to offend. I judge each of them false for a different reason. The atheist does not see the gods at all; the superstitious man believes he sees them and mistakes their benignity for terror, their paternal care for tyranny, their providence for cruelty.1
So the one is an insensibility, a want of feeling toward the divine good, and the other is a blind heap of passions that imagines the good to be evil, so that he fawns upon his gods and reproaches them, invokes them and accuses them in one breath.2 Neither is a neighbour of the other's cure, and the philosopher does not borrow a little from each.
He corrects each by what each lacks. You ask whether I can keep the rites while reasoning about them. I tell you I cannot keep them rightly without reasoning. Those consecrated to the service of the gods make use of symbols, some darker and some clearer, and this guides the understanding to things divine, but not without danger: some, failing to reach the true meaning, slide into downright superstition, and others, fleeing that quagmire, fall unawares over the precipice of atheism.3
That is exactly why the reasonings of philosophy are wanted here. They let us think piously of whatever is said or done in religion, so that we do not take otherwise than as meant what the laws wisely ordained about sacrifices and festivals.4 The Egyptians show it plainly. They eat honey and figs to Hermes and say, "Truth is a sweet thing," and Harpocrates, with his finger to his lips, is no infant god or god of pulse but the governor of our tender, inarticulate talk about the gods, a symbol of speaking little.5
A rite understood in this way is a lesson that has been preserved, and to keep it is to keep the lesson. The daimones and the oracle are where the middle path is tested hardest, and I will not pretend otherwise. We had already taken divination away from the gods and given it to the daimones; now there are men who would strip the daimones of the tripod as well and refer prophecy to exhalations, winds and vapours.6
That carries us still farther from the gods, and it makes nonsense of the practice. If a vapour from the ground does the work, why set apart one woman, bind her to chastity all her days, and refuse an answer unless the sacrificial victim quivers from foot to head as the wine is poured? The exhalation would ravish the first person who came to it, whether the beast trembled or not.7
The rites make sense only for those who ascribe the impulse to a god or a daimon. And when I recall what this oracle has done for the Greeks, in their wars, in founding cities, in plague and famine, it seems unfit to refer its origin to mere chance rather than to god and divine providence.8 So the reasoning I bring to Delphi is not an acid that dissolves it.
It is the argument that explains why the practice is built as it is. That is the difference between a philosopher's convenience and a philosopher's labour: convenience would let each side keep what it likes and say no more, whereas I must give a cause that accounts for the sacrifice, the priestess and the benefit alike. Last, the passions. The same ignorance of the divine runs in two streams, producing atheism in coarse, stubborn tempers and superstition in the tender and yielding, and what makes the latter so grievous is that it is an error inflamed, a mistake attended by a passion that worsens it, as a dislocation hurts more with a bruise.9
That is why I call the superstitious the more wretched. His opinion is false, and he also burns with it. The man who holds the divine to be good, and the rites to be its symbols, keeps his reverence and loses the fever. If that is convenience, it is the convenience of being cured.
God is good and does not harm; providence is real and punishes in its own time, which seems delay to us; the old rites are to be kept because they are the city's and because they carry truth veiled in symbol, and the philosopher's task is to find the truth and not to mock the veil. Between the atheist who denies the gods and the superstitious man who fears them, the superstitious man is the more wretched, for atheism is a false opinion and superstition a disease; but both are false.1011
The daimones stand between gods and men, administer the oracles, and are not themselves immortal, which is why oracles fail when the daimon leaves. All of this is argued, in dialogue, with the opposite view given its due.12
the former sees not the Gods at all, the latter believes that he really sees them; the former wholly overlooks them, but the latter mistakes their benignity for terror, their paternal affection for tyranny, their providence for crueltyEssays and Miscellanies, Morals Vol 1
atheism is an absolute insensibility to God (or _want of passion_), which does not recognize goodness; while superstition is a blind heap of passions, which imagine the good to be evil. They are afraid of their Gods, and yet run to them; they fawn upon them, and reproach themEssays and Miscellanies, Morals Vol 1
For some not being able to reach their true meaning, have slid into downright superstition; and others again, while they would fly the quagmire of superstition, have fallen unwittingly upon the precipice of atheism.Essays and Miscellanies, Morals Vol 4
we should here make most use of the reasonings from philosophy, which introduce us into the knowledge of things sacred, that so we may think piously of whatever is said or acted in religionEssays and Miscellanies, Morals Vol 4
Truth is a sweet thing... he hath always his finger upon his mouth, as a symbol of talking little and keeping silence.Essays and Miscellanies, Morals Vol 4
now we are for excluding them also, and dispossessing them of the oracle and three-footed stool, referring the cause, or rather the nature and essence, of divination to exhalations, winds, and vaporsEssays and Miscellanies, Morals Vol 4
For the exhalation which springeth out of the ground, whether the beast tremble or not, will always, if it be present, cause a ravishment and transport of spirit, and dispose the soul alike, not only of Pythia, but of any one else that first comethEssays and Miscellanies, Morals Vol 4
when I call to mind of what benefit this oracle has been unto the Greeks, not only in their wars and building of cities, but also in the stresses of plague and famine, methinks it is very unfit to refer its invention and original unto mere chance, rather than to God and divine providence.Essays and Miscellanies, Morals Vol 4
Our great ignorance of the Divine Beings most naturally runs in two streams; whereof the one in harsh and coarse tempers... produces atheism, and the other in the more tender and flexible... produces superstition.Essays and Miscellanies, Morals Vol 1
Well then, is not this the very case of the atheist, compared with the superstitious? The former sees not the Gods at all, the latter believes that he really sees them; the former wholly overlooks them, but the latter mistakes their benignity for terror, their paternal affection for tyranny, their providence for cruelty, and their frank simplicity for savageness and brutality.Essays and Miscellanies, Morals Vol 1
He looks pale with a garland on his head, he sacrifices and fears, prays with a faltering tongue, and offers incense with a trembling hand. In a word, he utterly baffles that saying of Pythagoras, that we are then best when we come near the Gods. For the superstitious person is then in his worst and most pitiful condition, when he approaches the shrines and temples of the Gods. 10.Essays and Miscellanies, Morals Vol 1
I know not what gates of hell open themselves from beneath, rivers of fire together with Stygian torrents present themselves to view; a gloomy darkness appears full of ghastly spectres and horrid shapes, with dreadful aspects and doleful groans, together with judges and tormentors, pits and caverns, full of millions of miseries and woes.Essays and Miscellanies, Morals Vol 1
The religious philosophy that Christians quoted against pagans and Enlightenment writers quoted against Christians; its critics on both sides call it a compromise, and the dialogues are built to show that it is a position.