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FORE:Daemonism, however, does not fill a very great place in the creed of Plutarch; and a comparison of him with his successors shows that the saner traditions of Greek thought only gradually gave way to the rising flood of ignorance and unreason. It is true that, as a moralist, the philosopher of Chaeronea considered religion of inestimable importance to human virtue and human happiness; while, as a historian, he accepted stories of supernatural occurrences with a credulity recalling that of Livy and falling little short of Dion Cassius. Nor did his own Platonistic monotheism prevent him from extending a very generous intellectual toleration to the different forms of polytheism which he found everywhere prevailing.395 In this respect, he and probably all the philosophers of that and the succeeding age, the Epicureans, the Sceptics, and some of the Cynics alone excepted, offer a striking contradiction to one of Gibbon��s most celebrated epigrams. To them the popular religions were not equally false but equally true, and, to a certain extent, equally useful. Where Plutarch drew the line was at what he called Deisidaimonia, the frightful mental malady which, as already mentioned, began to afflict Greece soon after the conquests of Alexander. It is generally translated superstition, but has a much narrower meaning. It expresses the beliefs and feelings of one who lives in perpetual dread of provoking supernatural vengeance, not254 by wrongful behaviour towards his fellow-men, nor even by intentional disrespect towards a higher power, but by the neglect of certain ceremonial observances; and who is constantly on the look-out for heaven-sent prognostications of calamities, which, when they come, will apparently be inflicted from sheer ill-will, Plutarch has devoted one of his most famous essays to the castigation of this weakness. He deliberately prefers atheism to it, showing by an elaborate comparison of instances that the former��with which, however, he has no sympathy at all��is much less injurious to human happiness, and involves much less real impiety, than such a constant attribution of meaningless malice to the gods. One example of Deisidaimonia adduced by Plutarch is Sabbatarianism, especially when carried, as it had recently been by the Jews during the siege of Jerusalem, to the point of entirely suspending military operations on the day of rest.396 That the belief in daemons, some of whom passed for being malevolent powers, might yield a fruitful crop of new superstitions, does not seem to have occurred to Plutarch; still less that the doctrine of future torments of which, following Plato��s example, he was a firm upholder, might prove a terror to others besides offenders against the moral law,��especially when manipulated by a class whose interest it was to stimulate the feeling in question to the utmost possible intensity."Inevitably. But you were not in a book, unfortunately. You were flesh and blood and you took your own way. You thought you had been slighted. You made up your mind to get your revenge at any price. All the same, you could not see your way. You wanted a neat plot to get Bruce into trouble, for he had bad taste in not caring for you. You used the simple expedient of stealing mine."

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FORE:Never thinking of rest he went on day and night, taking away the poor fellows' arms and legs, and all this by the miserable light of some candles. Gas and electricity were not to be had, the works being idle after the destruction of the town....The next morning was Sunday, and the bells summoned the people to church. But nobody went, nobody dared to appear in the street, although prayer-book and rosary are always in everybody's hands during these days. I had decided to go to the second Mass, but as nobody had come to the first, there was no second. The Dean himself said that the people were quite right not to come to church. The previous Sunday the Germans, who had entered Lanaeken suddenly, had posted themselves in front of the church, where the believers attended Holy Mass, and ordered the women and children to leave the church, but the men to stay. When all the women and children had left, the Germans entered the building and ... found not a single man, for all had left quickly by the back door. A veritable battue was held in the whole district for185 lads and young men, who were all taken away as prisoners by the Germans, because during the last few days great numbers had escaped to the north and enlisted as volunteers in the army.

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