of the
Epicurean becomes the practice of mankind in general. Nor can we be
said to be free from that which Plato justly considers to be the worst
unbelief--of those who put superstition in the place of true religion.
For the larger half of Christians continue to assert that the justice of
God may be turned aside by gifts, and, if not by the 'odour of fat, and
the sacrifice steaming to heaven,' still by another kind of
sacrifice placed upon the altar--by masses for the quick and dead, by
dispensations, by building churches, by rites and ceremonies--by the
same means which the heathen used, taking other names and shapes. And
the indifference of Epicureanism and unbelief is in two ways the parent
of superstition, partly because it permits, and also because it
creates, a necessity for its development in religious and enthusiastic
temperaments. If men cannot have a rational belief, they will have an
irrational. And hence the most superstitious countries are also at a
certain point of civilization the most unbelieving, and the revolution
which takes one direction is quickly followed by a reaction in the
other. So we may read 'between the lines' ancient history and philosophy
into modern, and modern into ancient. Whether we compare the theory of
Greek philosophy with the Christian religion, or the practice of the
Gentile world with the practice of the Christian world, they will be
found to differ more in words and less in reality than we might have
supposed. The greater opposition which is sometimes made between them
seems to arise chiefly out of a comparison of the ideal of the one with
the practice of the other.

To the errors of superstition and unbelief Plato opposes the simple and
natural truth of religion; the best and highest, whether conceived in
the form of a person or a principle--as the divine mind or as the idea
of good--is believed by him to be the basis of human life. That all
things are working together for good to the good and evil to the evil in
this or in some other world to which human actions are transferred, is
the sum of his faith or theology. Unlike Socrates, he is absolutely free
from superstition. Religion and morality are one and indivisible to him.
He dislikes the 'heathen mythology,' which, as he significantly remarks,
was not tolerated in Crete, and perhaps (for the meaning of his words
is not quite clear) at Sparta. He gives no encouragement to individual
enthusiasm; 'the establishment of religion