lone
dreaded them, merely impersonations of the powers of nature.

3. That it was physical injury which these gods were expected to
inflict.

But he himself agrees with this theory of mine; for he says shortly
after, that not only philosophers, but even the ancient Romans, had
separated superstition from religion; and that the word was first applied
to those who prayed all day ut liberi sui sibi superstites essent--might
survive them. On the etymology no one will depend who knows the
remarkable absence of any etymological instinct in the ancients, in
consequence of their weak grasp of that sound inductive method which has
created modern criticism. But if it be correct, it is a natural and
pathetic form for superstition to take in the minds of men who saw their
children fade and die; probably the greater number of them beneath
diseases which mankind could neither comprehend nor cure.

The best exemplification of what the ancients meant by superstition is to
be found in the lively and dramatic words of Aristotle's great pupil,
Theophrastus.

The superstitious man, according to him, after having washed his hands
with lustral water--that is, water in which a torch from the altar had
been quenched, goes about with a laurel-leaf in his mouth, to keep off
evil influences, as the pigs in Devonshire used, in my youth, to go about
with a withe of mountain ash round their necks to keep off the evil eye.
If a weasel crosses his path, he stops, and either throws three pebbles
into the road, or, with the innate selfishness of fear, lets some one
else go before him, and attract to himself the harm which may ensue. He
has a similar dread of a screech-owl, whom he compliments in the name of
its mistress, Pallas Athene. If he finds a serpent in his house, he sets
up an altar to it. If he pass at a four-cross-way an anointed stone, he
pours oil on it, kneels down, and adores it. If a rat has nibbled one of
his sacks he takes it for a fearful portent--a superstition which Cicero
also mentions. He dare not sit on a tomb, because it would be assisting
at his own funeral. He purifies endlessly his house, saying that
Hecate--that is, the moon--has exercised some malign influence on it; and
many other purifications he observes, of which I shall only say that they
are by their nature plainly, like the last, meant as preservatives
against unseen malarias or contagions, possible or impossible. He
assists every month with his children