Ignorance and credulity

Use in the book

The religious sequence begins by joining vulnerability to exploitation. In the account associated with Lemnius, the Devil misleads worshippers and inspires ministers with falsehood; the ministers willingly cooperate for their own ends. Simplicity, fear and ignorance provide their opportunity. Burton thus gives the alleged deceivers agency rather than treating false belief as a wholly self-generated defect in the followers. His causal synopsis separately lists influences from others and dispositions in the people affected.

The flock image makes conformity visible. Lead one ram through a gap and the rest follow; the “bellua multorum capitum,” beast with many heads, acts collectively without testing its direction. “Non quâ eundum, sed quâ itur” distinguishes where one ought to go from where people do go. Burton then supplies changes of imperial religion as examples of allegiance following authority. His claim about common sense is qualified by “many times”; the catalogue’s sequence is rhetorical and even places Constantius after Julian. It should not become an independently established chronology or a finding about every member of a social class.

Ignorance then occupies three positions: a cause of superstition, a symptom, and madness itself. Cause explains how the condition arises; symptom marks its manifestation; the final predicate identifies it with the condemned state. The relations remain distinct even when Burton puts them in one sentence. His conclusion follows Cardano’s disparagement of children, women and older people. The adjoining verse adds that ignorance is both the cause of its punishment and its own punishment, intensifying the circular account rather than supplying a modern diagnosis.

The commercial comparison describes belief accepted “a trust,” on credit, like goods from a mercer. The next clause changes the emphasis from the customers’ readiness to the promoters’ method: they first introduce the religion, then preserve it by keeping people continually ignorant. “Ignorance is the mother of devotion” names the supposed generative condition of this unexamined observance. It is part of an accusation about cultivated submission, not an unqualified recommendation to remain ignorant.

The qualification is explicit in the next paragraph. Christ’s “few silly Fishermen” confound worldly wisdom and save sinners; exploiters instead turn lack of knowledge to their own advantage. Silly here means simple or unlearned and is compatible with an honoured vocation. Limited learning alone therefore cannot identify the false religion. Burton nevertheless immediately resumes prejudicial generalizations about Islam and then Catholic and separatist communities; the positive contrast does not remove those attacks from the text.

The asserted restrictions are specific: no comment or dispute, belief “implicitè,” without question, and threats against contradiction in the anti-Muslim account; concealed Scripture, Latin readings for only a few, and saints’ legends for the rest in the anti-Catholic account. These are Burton’s hostile claims, not neutral descriptions of either tradition. “Blind bayards,” blind horses, describes the people he says have been brought up and kept in darkness. He says most of the Catholics he attacks, not all, even though the immediately preceding separatist accusation uses all.

Lavater’s counterfactual makes instruction the missing alternative. If pastors had taught properly and had not prohibited Scripture, the people would not have remained as they were. Burton’s hawks are “hood-winked”: literally blindfolded, with the falconer’s hood becoming a figure for obstructed understanding. The quoted Latin margin promises correct opinions “de multis,” on many matters, not perfect knowledge of everything; it joins proper instruction and non-prohibition where Burton’s English uses or. The body and margin support the same broad accusation without saying exactly the same thing.

The continuation adds emotional management to withheld teaching. The schoolmaster’s mixture of encouragement and, chiefly, fear becomes an analogy for teachers who flatter and coax listeners while threatening them. The ensuing examples of frightening apparitions and purgatory lead to another bird image, a hobby intimidating a lark. This is not merely a claim that followers choose badly: Burton portrays an organized use of instruction, its absence and punitive fear. The cited Egyptian illustration needs the edition’s warning that Burton turns Curtius’s reassuring scene into intimidation.

Two further uses prevent the family from becoming a single religious label. The proverb “who so bold as blinde Bayard” condemns rash medicinal prescribing, not compulsory blindness. Elsewhere the claim that ignorance is an effortless remedy for troubles belongs to a reported consolatory paradox: some think unawareness happier than anxious knowledge. The continuation still acknowledges distress and pity. Neither passage recommends ignorance or licenses the historical medical practices described.

The original and marginal layers can even disagree about belief. At the supposed charm cures, the English body prints incredulity, disbelief, but Weyer’s quoted margin has credulitate, credulity; the edition translates both rather than correcting one by the other. In a separate marginal warning about reported cures, fear of being credulous is itself said to risk excessive disbelief. These passages complicate any universal rule that ready belief is always the fault and doubt always its cure. The alleged cures remain historical claims, not established medical effects.

The later charcoal-burner story supplies another boundary. The Devil tells the man that ignorance of religious principles prevents salvation; Burton presents that accusation as something to resist. The man answers only that he believes as the Church does, and the Church as he does, until the interrogator leaves him. Here refusal to enter an endless doctrinal dispute protects faith rather than proving false religion. The next sentence directs the troubled person to Christ’s protection. This is not a general licence for manufactured ignorance, but a pastoral limit on what ignorance can be made to prove.

Related entries

Wit (Wit), Action (Action), Common sense (Common sense), Religious melancholy (Religious melancholy), Religion and superstition (Religion and superstition), and Enthusiasm (Enthusiasm), all Batch 1; Idiot (Idiot), Silly (Silly), and Collogue (Collogue), all Batch 3. Faith, assurance and presumption (Faith, assurance and presumption), Light of nature (Light of nature) and Scripture and interpretation (Scripture and interpretation), Batch 4, distinguish partial knowledge from revelation and the uses of textual access from manipulation.

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 6; Subsection 2. The Power of Imagination · paragraph 28; Subsection 14 Self-Love, Vainglory, Praise, Honour, Excessive Applause, Pride, Too Much Joy, and So on, as Causes · paragraphs 18–20; Member 3 Immediate Cause of the Preceding Symptoms · paragraphs 16–18; The Second Partition. The Cure of Melancholy. Section 1. Member 1. Subsection 1. Unlawful Cures Rejected · paragraph 42; Note 4957; Member 8 Against Melancholy Itself · paragraphs 33–37; Member 2 Subsection 1 Single Substances That Purge Upwards · paragraphs 39–42; ♊ Religious Melancholy. Section 4 · paragraph 23ignorance and error distinguished; the body/margin credulity conflict; credulity about oneself; desired appearances and the Laet-attributed denial; the marginal warning against both credulity and disbelief; the reported consolation of unawareness; Blind Bayard in reckless prescribing; the causal synopsis.
2. Causes of Religious Melancholy. From the Devil, Through Miracles, Apparitions and Oracles. His Instruments or Agents: Politicians, Priests, Impostors, Heretics and Blind Guides. In Them: Credulity, Fear, Blind Zeal, Ignorance, Solitude, Curiosity, Pride, Vanity, Presumption and So On. His Devices: Fasting, Solitude, Hope, Fear and the Rest · paragraphs 21–38; Causes of Religious Melancholy. From the Devil, Through Miracles, Apparitions and Oracles. His Instruments or Agents: Politicians, Priests, Impostors, Heretics and Blind Guides. In Them: Credulity, Fear, Blind Zeal, Ignorance, Solitude, Curiosity, Pride, Vanity, Presumption and So On. His Devices: Fasting, Solitude, Hope, Fear and the Rest · paragraphs 21–26; Causes of Religious Melancholy. From the Devil, Through Miracles, Apparitions and Oracles. His Instruments or Agents: Politicians, Priests, Impostors, Heretics and Blind Guides. In Them: Credulity, Fear, Blind Zeal, Ignorance, Solitude, Curiosity, Pride, Vanity, Presumption and So On. His Devices: Fasting, Solitude, Hope, Fear and the Rest · paragraphs 27–28; Causes of Religious Melancholy. From the Devil, Through Miracles, Apparitions and Oracles. His Instruments or Agents: Politicians, Priests, Impostors, Heretics and Blind Guides. In Them: Credulity, Fear, Blind Zeal, Ignorance, Solitude, Curiosity, Pride, Vanity, Presumption and So On. His Devices: Fasting, Solitude, Hope, Fear and the Rest · paragraphs 29–33; Causes of Religious Melancholy. From the Devil, Through Miracles, Apparitions and Oracles. His Instruments or Agents: Politicians, Priests, Impostors, Heretics and Blind Guides. In Them: Credulity, Fear, Blind Zeal, Ignorance, Solitude, Curiosity, Pride, Vanity, Presumption and So On. His Devices: Fasting, Solitude, Hope, Fear and the Rest · paragraph 34; Causes of Religious Melancholy. From the Devil, Through Miracles, Apparitions and Oracles. His Instruments or Agents: Politicians, Priests, Impostors, Heretics and Blind Guides. In Them: Credulity, Fear, Blind Zeal, Ignorance, Solitude, Curiosity, Pride, Vanity, Presumption and So On. His Devices: Fasting, Solitude, Hope, Fear and the Rest · paragraphs 35–38the sustained argument: willing ministers, the herd and the three-role classification; credit and the fishermen exception; asserted restrictions and blind horses; Lavater’s counterfactual and hooded hawks; the following coercive use of fear.
3. Treatment of Despair Through Medicine, Good Counsel, Consolation, and So On · paragraphs 43–45; I · paragraph 263the later countercase, already discussed under Faith, assurance and presumption: the Devil’s claim that doctrinal ignorance entails rejection is resisted, not endorsed. The historical Table’s “Ignorance the mother of devotion 655” retains its own page pointer; this edition labels the proverb’s source page 653.

In this edition

“Still” in “keep them still in ignorance” means continually, not motionlessly. “Too credulous” becomes “too readily believe,” whereas the Latin “nimis credulus” is rendered “excessively credulous.” The phrase “beleeved implicitè” becomes “believed without question”; the adverb supplies only “without question,” not the whole compulsory passive construction. “Hood-winked” becomes “blindfolded,” and the added “hooded” before “hawks” explains the image.

The two ignorance-as-remedy formulations remain separate: Latin “iners” gives “effortless,” while Burton’s English “down-right” gives the sense outright or thorough. In Lavater’s margin, the original Latin is Burton’s quoted marginal evidence; the English translation that follows it and the comparison in the note belong to this edition. The body’s “they had not been as they are” must not replace the margin’s narrower correct judgment on many matters.

ignorance deliberately maintained

Lack of knowledge made persistent by withholding instruction and access to Scripture, rather than merely a person’s initial lack of learning.

Grammar: English mass noun ignorance governed by keep... in; still means continually.

Original text: “the best means they have to broach first, or to maintain it when they have done, is to keep them still in ignorance”. In the modern column: “The best means of first introducing it, or maintaining it once introduced, is to keep them continually ignorant”. Burton moves from susceptibility to an accusation that religious promoters deliberately perpetuate the condition that serves them. The apparent they changes from followers ready to believe to the promoters who keep them ignorant. The accusation develops through anti-Muslim, anti-Catholic and anti-separatist polemic; it is not a neutral account of those communities. Still corresponds to continually; broach first to first introducing, and maintain retains the contrast between initial establishment and continued control.

credulous

Too ready to believe a favourable or desired report without adequate examination; the object and motive vary between self-praise, perceived appearances and religious teaching.

Grammar: English adjective credulous in a predicative construction with of; also English adjective prone governing the infinitive to beleeve, with a parenthetical commercial comparison. The modern respectively recasts the adjective as readily believe and prone as ready.

Access scope (good parts): Self-praised qualities in 045-19, not anatomical parts.

Access scope (good qualities): Self-praised qualities in 045-19, not anatomical parts.

Original text: “we are too credulous of our own good parts and praises”. In the modern column: “we too readily believe in our own good qualities and praises”. The self-inclusive we makes credulity a fault of self-estimation, not only the fault of supposedly uneducated religious followers. Burton includes himself and his readers in we, while his comparison about women remains disparaging. The wider paragraph distinguishes causes arising from ourselves from those coming from others. Too credulous becomes too readily believe; own good parts becomes own good qualities, and praises is retained.

Original text: “prone without either examination or due consideration (for they take up Religion a trust, as at Mercers they do their wares) to beleeve any thing”. In the modern column: “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 complete construction defines the unexamined readiness described by this article’s family title. The grammatical subject continues from 155-26. Burton’s always/first-affected social and gender claims are hostile generalizations, not adopted findings. Prone... to beleeve is recast as ready to believe; any thing is anything, not merely one specified doctrine. The commercial comparison belongs to the intervening parenthesis.

credulus

Credulous or ready to believe; nimis marks excessive credulity in the explorer report, while a marginal warning fears that avoiding credulity can lead to excessive disbelief.

Grammar: Latin masculine nominative singular adjective credulus, intensified by nimis; vanissimus is a separate superlative adjective. In the separate margin creduli is masculine nominative plural predicate with an infinitive; the surrounding unwillingness and fear control the assertion rather than defining additional lexical entries.

Original text: “vanissimus & nimis credulus”. In the modern column: “utterly fanciful and excessively credulous”. The account from Laet denies that the imagined cities existed and explains the vision by Sarmiento’s wish for them. Not, saith mine Author marks a reported denial, not the lexicon’s independent judgment of the voyage. Burton adds that Sarmiento would fain have had it so. Credulus supplies credulous; nimis excessively. Vanissimus supplies utterly fanciful in this edition, not an intensifier of credulus. The ampersand supplies and.

Original margin: “Hæc alii rident, sed vereor ne dum nolumus esse creduli, vitium non effugiamus incredulitatis”. Supplied note translation or expansion: “Others laugh at these things; but I fear that, in our unwillingness to be credulous, we may fail to escape the fault of disbelief”. The margin balances distrust of marvels against the danger of an opposite excessive refusal to believe. Burton-labelled original marginal quotation; its translation is editorial. The body attributes the disbelief warning to Taurellus. The surrounding magical-cure reports and lawfulness debate are not verified efficacy or advice. The speaker fears a possible failure to escape disbelief when avoiding credulity; this is not an imperative to believe all reported cures. Creduli supplies credulous. The remaining sentence places this adjective in a warning against the opposite extreme of disbelief; the whole warning is not assigned as the adjective’s translation.

flock of sheep

An image of followers who copy others and follow a ruler’s religious choice; the leading ram embodies the mechanism of imitation.

Grammar: English noun phrase flock of sheep in an explicit comparison introduced by as.

Original text: “the common people are as a flock of sheep”. In the modern column: “the common people are like a flock of sheep”. The following ram led through a gap explains how one example is said to draw all the others after it. Burton’s classed polemic qualifies lack of common sense with many times, but states all the rest will follow in the ram simile. The subsequent rulers catalogue is rhetorical, not chronologically ordered. As is made like; flock and sheep retain the pastoral terms. The ram is a separate part of the developed comparison.

bellua multorum capitum

A beast with many heads: the multitude represented collectively as one animal with many individual members.

Grammar: Latin nominative singular noun bellua with genitive plural multorum capitum, of many heads.

Original text: “bellua multorum capitum”. In the modern column: “a beast with many heads”. The Latin phrase apposes the preceding English meer beast and extends the hostile image of the crowd. A familiar disparaging image employed by Burton. The following Senecan phrase concerns habitual paths and does not establish that Seneca supplied this beast phrase. Bellua supplies beast, multorum capitum with many heads; a is supplied for English grammar. It does not name several animals.

Non quâ eundum, sed quâ itur

Not the route one ought to take, but the route people actually take: a contrast between right conduct and imitation of prevailing conduct.

Grammar: Latin elliptical antithesis: non... sed contrasts impersonal gerundive eundum, obligation, with passive impersonal itur, actual going; quâ means by which way.

Access scope (quâ): Route or manner component repeated in the non... sed antithesis, not the entire normative contrast.

Access scope (by the way): Route or manner component repeated in the non... sed antithesis, not the entire normative contrast.

Original text: “Non quâ eundum, sed quâ itur”. In the modern column: “not by the way one ought to go, but by the way people do go”. The maxim supplies the distinction lost when followers copy a ruler’s religion. The margin names Seneca; the accompanying note identifies On the Happy Life 1.3 while noting slightly different wording. This is not claimed as a fresh collation of Burton’s witness. The complete antithesis is aligned. Ought belongs to eundum, not itur; people is an idiomatic subject supplied for impersonal going, not a separately printed noun.

Ignorance is the mother of devotion

A causal proverb used ironically in the accusation that uninformed religious submission can be cultivated and sustained by teachers.

Grammar: English proverbial predication: ignorance is subject, mother of devotion its figurative complement.

Original text: “Ignorance is the mother of devotion”. In the modern column: “Ignorance is the mother of devotion”. Mother means the supposed generative source of this unexamined observance, not a maternal person. As all the world knows is Burton’s rhetorical claim. His next sentence contrasts the Saviour’s simple fishermen with exploiters, preventing a general equation of limited education with false religion. The modern retains the wording and places quotation marks around it. Devotion in this polemical sentence is not Burton’s blanket name for every sincere act of worship.

implicitè: belief without question

Without independent questioning or examination, in Burton’s allegation of coerced acceptance of the Quran.

Grammar: Latin adverb implicitè inserted in an English passive construction it must be beleeved.

Access scope (beleeved implicitè): Mixed English passive and Latin adverb; implicitè alone corresponds to without question.

Original text: “it must be beleeved implicitè”. In the modern column: “it must be believed without question”. The alleged prohibition covers comment, dispute and contradiction, and is said to carry a death penalty. The statement follows Breydenbach’s hostile characterization and is Burton’s sweeping anti-Muslim assertion, not a verified description of Islamic interpretation or law. Implicitè corresponds only to without question; must and believed preserve the compulsory passive. It is not the different compact/legal sense of implicite in 013-36.

blind bayard

A blind horse used proverbially for rash, ignorant conduct; the religious plural emphasizes followers kept from knowledge.

Grammar: English noun bayard, singular in the medical proverb and plural bayards in religious abuse; blind/blinde modifies it.

Original text: “who so bold as blinde Bayard”. In the modern column: “who is as bold as blind Bayard”. The proverb criticizes reckless hellebore dosing by household prescribers. A historical medical warning, not dosing guidance. The report of Turner’s limited tolerance is followed by a charge that people commonly exceed it. Blind Bayard is retained as a proverb in the modern body; the horse meaning is not literally written out there.

Original text: “stupid, ignorant and blinde bayards”. In the modern column: “stupid, ignorant, blind horses”. The insult is immediately followed by an explanation: the people are brought up and kept in darkness. The paragraph says all of its named separatists but most of its Catholics. The article does not universalize most, adopt the insult, or erase the distinction. Bayards becomes horses, not the name of a particular individual. The lexical horse meaning and insult are explained by the accompanying note.

hood-winked

Blindfolded or deprived of sight, figuratively deprived of the knowledge needed to judge or choose.

Grammar: English past participle hood-winked after carried; elsewhere printed hood-winkt.

Original text: “carried hood-winked like hawkes”. In the modern column: “carried about blindfolded like hooded hawks”. The literal hood of a trained hawk supplies the image for people whose pastors have denied instruction and Scripture. The preceding counterfactual, attributed to Lavater, locates responsibility with teachers. It does not say that these people lack a natural capacity to learn. Hood-winked becomes blindfolded; like hawkes is expanded to like hooded hawks so that the mechanism of the comparison is explicit. About is supplied in the modern movement phrase.

withheld instruction: counterfactual remedy

The claim that proper teaching and access to Scripture would have enabled better religious judgment, making ignorance a condition that could have been changed.

Grammar: Latin past counterfactual conditional: fecissent, instituissent and interdixissent in the condition; sensissent in the result; de multis limits its subject matter.

Access scope (and had not): Nec coordinates the negative third condition in the Latin counterfactual, not a negation of all preceding instruction.

Original margin: “Si Doctores suum fecissent officium, et plebem fidei commissam rectè instituissent de doctrinæ Christianæ capitib. nec sacris scripturis interdixissent, de multis proculdubio rectè sensissent”. Supplied note translation or expansion: “If the teachers had done their duty and rightly instructed the people entrusted to their care in the chief points of Christian doctrine, and had not forbidden them the sacred Scriptures, they would undoubtedly have held correct opinions on many matters”. The original margin gives a more particular outcome than Burton’s English they had not been as they are. Lavater-attributed Latin quotation in a Burton-labelled note; the English translation after the quotation and the accompanying note’s comparison are editorial layers. Burton’s English body says or had not forbidden, whereas the Latin coordinates and... and not. The whole conditional is retained. De multis supplies on many matters, not every matter. Nec means and had not in the third conditional clause; it does not negate instruction itself.

ignorance as relief from troubles

An absence of awareness presented in a reported consolatory paradox as easier or happier than anxious knowledge, rather than as a recommended educational condition.

Grammar: Latin nominal sentence iners malorum remedium ignorantia, with ignorantia as subject and remedium as predicate; iners modifies remedium. The separate English adjective down-right modifies remedy in Burton’s following gloss and means outright, not effortless.

Original text: “iners malorum remedium ignorantia”. In the modern column: “Ignorance is an effortless remedy for troubles”. The saying follows the Sophoclean thought that life without awareness is sweetest. Burton’s separate English calls ignorance a down-right remedy. Some think introduces the paradox; 098-37 returns to distress and pity and again says some hold. The intervening colonial and Ottoman stereotypes are not adopted as facts. Iners gives effortless, remedium remedy, malorum for troubles and ignorantia ignorance; is is supplied. Down-right belongs to Burton’s separate English gloss and means outright, not the same component as iners.

Original text: “ignorance is a down-right remedy of evils”. In the modern column: “ignorance is a downright remedy for evils”. Burton’s English gloss emphasizes a thorough or outright remedy, distinct from the preceding Latin effortless formulation. Some think frames the consolatory paradox. An accompanying note distinguishes iners from Burton’s English down-right. Down-right becomes downright in the supplied modern; outright is the edition note’s explanatory access gloss, not the paired modern token.

Earlier explanation: wit

Earlier explanation: wit · local use 3

For wit, see Wit.

Earlier explanation: positive act

Earlier explanation: positive act

For positive act, see Action.

Earlier explanation: a cause of their superstition, a Symptome, and madness it self

Earlier explanation: ignorance as madness

For a cause of their superstition, a Symptome, and madness it self, see Religious melancholy.

Earlier explanation: take up Religion a trust

Earlier explanation: take religion on trust

For take up Religion a trust, see Religion and superstition.

Earlier explanation: common sense

Earlier explanation: common sense · local use 3

For common sense, see Common sense.

Earlier explanation: silly

Earlier explanation: Silly · silly · local use 15

For silly, the passage, see Silly.

Earlier explanation: collogue

Earlier explanation: Collogue · collogue

For collogue, see Collogue.

Earlier explanation: entire Ideots

Earlier explanation: Entire idiots; alleged absence of understanding

For entire Ideots, see Idiot.

Earlier explanation: inspired

Earlier explanation: inspire · inspired · local use 2

For inspired, see Enthusiasm.

Earlier explanation: credulitate

Earlier explanation: superstitious cure

For credulitate, see Religion and superstition.

Access scope (credulitate): Original quoted margin, not original body. Latin credulitate means credulity; body incredulity differs and remains unchanged.

Access scope (impia credulitate): Original quoted margin, not original body. Latin credulitate means credulity; body incredulity differs and remains unchanged.