Now as in the past the rejection of Divine truth in the name of reason often opens the way to beliefs and practices which are at once unworthy of reason and dangerous to morality. Superstition of any description is a transgression of the First Commandment: "I am the Lord thy God ,-- thou shalt not have strange gods before me. thou shalt not adore them nor serve them" ( Exodus 20:2-5 ). "Superstition is the baseless fear of the gods, religion the pious worship." According to Isidore of Seville (Etymolog., l. iii, sent.), the word comes from superstatuo or superinstituo : "Superstitio est superflua observantia in cultu super statuta seu instituta superiorum", i.e. "observances added on to prescribed or established worship"] is defined by St. The human mind, by a natural impulse, tends to worship something, and if it is convinced that Agnosticism is true and that God is unknowable, it will, sooner or later, devise other objects of worship. It is also significant that just when many scientists supposed that a belief in a future life had been finally proved an illusion, Spiritism, with its doctrines and practices, should have gained such a strong hold not only on the ignorant, but also, and in a much more serious sense, on leading representatives of science itself. [From supersisto , "to stand in terror of the deity " (Cicero, "De Nat.
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