9 6 Science Reiigion and Reality 



more divine than other diseases, but to have a physis just like other 

 diseases. Men regard its origin as divine from ignorance and 

 wonder, since it is a pecuh'ar condition and not readily understood. 

 Yet if it be reckoned divine merely because wonderful, then 

 instead of one there would be many sacred diseases. 



" To me, then, it appears that they who refer such conditions 

 to the gods are but as certain charlatans who claim to be excessively 

 religious and to know what is hidden from others. These men dt> 

 but use divinity as cloak to their own ignorance. They give out 

 the disease is sacred and adopt a mode of treatment that shall be 

 safe for themselves whatever happens. They apply purifications 

 and incantations and all manner of charlatanry, but mark ! they 

 also enforce abstinence from unwholesome food. All these things 

 they enjoin, they say, with reference to the divinity of the disease. 

 If the patient recover, theirs is the honour ; if he do not, it is the 

 god, not they, that is to blame, seeing they have administered 

 nothing unwholesome. 



" But consider ! Surely if these foods aggravate the disease 

 and it be cured by abstinence, then the god is not the cause of the 

 disease at all, and they who seek thus to cure it are by their very act 

 showing that it is neither sacred nor divine. Nay, more, the very 

 assertion of its sacredness and divinity savours of impiety, as though 

 there were no gods. 



"If these fellows professed to bring down the moon, to darken 

 the sun, or to induce storms or fine weather, should we not accuse 

 them of impiety, whether they claimed this power as derived from 

 the sacred mysteries or from any other knowledge .? Nay, more, 

 even if they could do these things, I, for my part, should still not 

 believe there was anything divine therein, since the divine would 

 have been overpowered by human knowledge and have become 

 subject thereto. 



" Surely then this disease has its physis and causes whence it 

 originates, even as have other diseases, and it is curable by means 

 comparable to their cure. It arises like them from things which 

 enter and quit the body, such as cold, the sun, and the winds, things 

 which are ever changing and are never at rest. Such things are 

 divine or no — as you will, for the distinction matters not — nor is 

 there need to make this distinction anywhere in Nature, wherein 

 all things are alike divine and all are alike human, for have not all 

 a physis which can be found by those who seek it steadfastly ? " 



