Superstition was disinherited when science revealed the laws of the universe and put man in his place.Man saw his fate in the clouds,his happiness or misery announced in the flight of birds and referred every phenomenon of life to the soothsayers and oracles.
You may read in Thucydides of battles being postponed and lost because some omen that has no moral relation to the event than the falling of a leaf was against it.
Romans would never transact business after it was thundered.
Alexander the Great surrounded himself with fortune tellers and took counsel with them.
Even great man Ceaser and modern and enlightened Cicero left their fate to augurs of omens.Sometimes the omens were right or wrong but they are equally meaningless.
Cicero lost his life by trusting to the wisdom of crows.
Farmers of ancient Greece consulted the omens and the oracles and the today farmers are only careful of his manures.
We escaped the grotesque shadows that enveloped them.We do not look for divine guidance in the entrails of animals or the flight of crows,and the house of commons does not adjourn at a clap of thunder.
For the pleasure of things is not in their possession but in their use.
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