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A great man is a torch in the darkness, a beacon in superstition's night, an inspiration and a prophecy. Greatness is not the gift of majorities; it cannot be thrust upon any man; men cannot give it to another; they can give place and power, but not greatness. The place does not make the man, nor the sceptre the king. Greatness is from within.
Hence the Roman poet LUCRETIUS, who lived when the old belief in the gods and goddesses of the heathen world had nearly faded away, attributes to the teachings of Epicurus the triumph of philosophy over superstition. On earth in bondage base existence lay, Bent down by Superstition's iron sway.
"On Boyne's famed banks our fathers bled; Boyne's surges with their blood ran red; And from the Boyne our foemen fled Intolerance, chains, and slavery. "Dark superstition's blood-stained sons Pressed on, but 'crack' went William's guns, And soon the gloomy monster runs Fell, hydra-headed bigotry.
What tho' the skeptic's scorn hath dared to soil The record of their fame! What tho' the men Of worldly minds have dared to stigmatize The sister-cause Religion and the Law With Superstition's name! Yet, yet their deeds, Their constancy in torture and in death These on Tradition's tongue shall live; these shall On History's honest page be pictur'd bright To latest time."
And although his fight against Superstition's views of life is conducted with a keenness that scouts discussion, whereas in modern Philosophy the contention is merely implied, it seemed as though his thoughts travelled along less stormy paths. In Hegel, it had been exclusively the comprehensiveness of the thoughts and the mode of the thought's procedure that held my attention.
COUNTESS. What is there here, then, So against nature? Help me to perceive it! Oh, let not superstition's nightly goblins Subdue thy clear, bright spirit! Art thou bid To murder? with abhorred, accursed poniard, To violate the breasts that nourished thee? That were against our nature, that might aptly Make thy flesh shudder, and thy whole heart sicken.
GRANDY. "When once superstition usurps the throne of reason, Charles, it is a difficult task to displace her. There are so many pleasing fallacies connected with her sway over the naturally indolent mind of man, that reason is altogether banished, and superstition's authority knows no bounds."
Our great Milton also gives us a similar opinion in the following words, which are taken from his Paradise Lost: "but in their room Wolves shall succeed for teachers, grievous wolves, Who all the sacred mysteries of Heaven To their own vile advantages shall turn Of lucre and ambition, and the truth With superstition's and tradition's taint, Left only in those written records pure, Though not but by the spirit understood."
Is there no other ancestral tomfoolery, no other of Superstition's patent Aylwinian soul-salves for the philosophical Nature-worshipper and apostle of rationalism to fly to? Her name was Winifred. 'Yis; don't I say 'er name wur Winifred? said the woman, who thought I was addressing her. 'You're jist like a poll-parrit with your "Winifred, Winifred, Winifred."
Here they have a little terror of small hobgoblins, good-natured fairies, a love-sick river-sprite, and so forth, beings who with us in the north, almost go about our houses like superstition's tame domestic animals. You have there, too, good-natured elves, who carry on their peaceful boating and coasting trade invisibly among the people.
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