Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

as we read of Caligula, that at his reception to the Empire he was
carried from Misenum to Rome in the midst of a throng of people, the
ways beset with altars, and beasts for sacrifice, and burning torches;
and of Caracalla, that was received into Alexandria with incense,
and with casting of flowers, and dadouchiais, that is, with torches;
for dadochoi were they that amongst the Greeks carried torches lighted
in the processions of their gods. And in process of time the devout
but ignorant people did many times honour their bishops with the
like pomp of wax candles, and the images of our Saviour and the
saints, constantly, in the church itself. And thus came in the use
of wax candles and was also established by some of the ancient
councils.
The heathens had also their aqua lustralis, that is to say, holy
water. The Church of Rome imitates them also in their holy days.
They had their bacchanalia, and we have our wakes, answering to
them; they their saturnalia, and we our carnivals and Shrove Tuesday's
liberty of servants; they their procession of Priapus, we our fetching
in, erection, and dancing about Maypoles; and dancing is one kind of
worship. They had their procession called Ambarvalia, and we our
procession about the fields in the Rogation week. Nor do I think
that these are all the ceremonies that have been left in the Church,
from the first conversion of the Gentiles, but they are all that I can
for the present call to mind. And if a man would well observe that
which is delivered in the histories, concerning the religious rites of
the Greeks and Romans, I doubt not but he might find many more of
these old empty bottles of Gentilism which the doctors of the Roman
Church, either by negligence or ambition, have filled up again with
the new wine of Christianity, that will not fail in time to break
them.
CHAPTER XLVI
OF DARKNESS FROM VAIN PHILOSOPHY AND FABULOUS TRADITIONS
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BY philosophy is understood the knowledge acquired by reasoning,
from the manner of the generation of anything, to the properties; or
from the properties, to some possible way of generation of the same;
to the end to be able to produce, as far as matter and human force
permit, such effects as human life requireth. So the geometrician,
from the construction of figures, findeth out many properties thereof;
and from the properties, new ways of their construction, by reasoning;
to the end to be able to measure land and water; and for infinite
other uses. So the astronomer, from the rising, setting, and moving of
the sun and stars in diverse parts of the heavens, findeth out the
causes of day and night, and of the different seasons of the year,
whereby he keepeth an account of time; and the like of other sciences.
By which definition it is evident that we are not to account as
any part thereof that original knowledge called experience, in which
consisteth prudence, because it is not attained by reasoning, but
found as well in brute beasts as in man; and is but a memory of
successions of events in times past, wherein the omission of every
little circumstance, altering the effect frustrateth the expectation
of the most prudent: whereas nothing is produced by reasoning
aright, but general, eternal, and immutable truth.
Nor are we therefore to give that name to any false conclusions; for
he that reasoneth aright in words he understandeth can never
conclude an error:
Nor to that which any man knows by supernatural revelation;