The Anatomy of Melancholy

For the common people are like a flock of sheep, an uncultivated, illiterate mob, often lacking common sense: a mere beast, “a beast with many heads,” that will go wherever it is led. Lead a ram by the horns through a gap and all the rest will follow, “not by the way one ought to go, but by the way people do go.” They will do as they see others do, and as their ruler wishes: whatever his religion, they are on his side.

Now they support those idolaters Maxentius and Licinius; then Constantine, a Christian. “May those who deny Christ perish miserably!” was shouted ten times, over the course of two hours; “Those who do not worship Christ are the emperor’s enemies!” was shouted thirty times. Before long they are idolaters again under that apostate Julian; all Arians under Constantius; good Catholics again under Jovian.

“And there is little difference between the judgment of adults and children in this matter, especially that of old people and women,” as Cardano argues, “when they are driven about by fear and superstition, and by other people’s folly and dishonesty.” So I may say that their ignorance is a cause of their superstition, a symptom, and itself a form of madness.

It is the cause of its punishment, and itself its punishment.

Their own fear, folly, stupidity and deplorable lethargy give the others their opportunity and bring these miseries down upon their own heads. For in all these religions and superstitions, among our idolaters, you will always find that those first affected are simple, uncultivated, ignorant people: old people naturally prone to superstition, weak women, or poor, uneducated, illiterate persons, readily influenced and tricked in this way;

ready to believe anything without examination or proper consideration—for they take religion on trust, as they buy goods on credit at the cloth merchant’s. The best means of first introducing it, or maintaining it once introduced, is to keep them continually ignorant: for “Ignorance is the mother of devotion,” as the whole world knows and these times can amply testify.

This has been the practice of the Devil and his infernal ministers in every age: not, like our Saviour, to confound the world’s wisdom through a few simple fishermen and save tax collectors and sinners, but to exploit their ignorance and convert them and their companions. To achieve their purposes more effectively, they begin, as I say, with poor, stupid, illiterate people.

So Muhammad did when he published his Quran, a work, says Breydenbach, “full of nonsense, barbarous language and confusion, without rhyme, reason or sound composition, first published among a company of uncouth peasants, swine-tenders, without discernment, judgment, skill or understanding; and it is still maintained in the same way.”

For it is part of their policy to allow no one to comment on it, or dare to dispute or question any part of it, even to this day. However absurd, incredible, ridiculous or fabulous it may be, it must be believed without question. On pain of death, no one must dare contradict it: “God and the emperor,” and so on.