"Superstition is only the fear of belief, while religion is the confidence"
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Blessington’s line turns a tidy moral hierarchy into a psychological one: superstition and religion aren’t opposites so much as moods. Superstition, she suggests, is belief that won’t admit it’s belief. It’s anxious, furtive, always hedging - a ritual performed with crossed fingers, a charm clutched “just in case,” a dread that the universe is booby-trapped. Calling it “the fear of belief” is the shrewd move: the problem isn’t that superstition believes too much, but that it believes without the nerve to own its metaphysics.
Then comes the counterweight: religion as “confidence.” Not proof, not certainty - confidence. That word matters in an era when polite society was learning to speak the language of reason while still living in a culture saturated with providence, omens, and moral accounting. Confidence is social as much as spiritual; it’s what lets a creed function publicly, with institutions, norms, and a sense of steadiness. Blessington, a novelist and salon figure moving through post-Enlightenment Britain and Ireland, knew how belief is performed: respectable faith is belief that looks composed.
The subtext carries a mild satire of classed spirituality. Superstition is what “they” do in the dark - the rural poor, the uneducated, the nervous. Religion is what “we” do in daylight - the disciplined version, with manners and sanctioned language. Her aphorism flatters religion by framing it as emotional competence, but it also quietly exposes its mechanics: the difference may be less about truth than about tone, about whether belief can hold eye contact.
Then comes the counterweight: religion as “confidence.” Not proof, not certainty - confidence. That word matters in an era when polite society was learning to speak the language of reason while still living in a culture saturated with providence, omens, and moral accounting. Confidence is social as much as spiritual; it’s what lets a creed function publicly, with institutions, norms, and a sense of steadiness. Blessington, a novelist and salon figure moving through post-Enlightenment Britain and Ireland, knew how belief is performed: respectable faith is belief that looks composed.
The subtext carries a mild satire of classed spirituality. Superstition is what “they” do in the dark - the rural poor, the uneducated, the nervous. Religion is what “we” do in daylight - the disciplined version, with manners and sanctioned language. Her aphorism flatters religion by framing it as emotional competence, but it also quietly exposes its mechanics: the difference may be less about truth than about tone, about whether belief can hold eye contact.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
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