authoritative opinions and propagating religious creeds. Reason
fortunately is able to avail herself of the same help.

The following sketch is confined to Western

[21] civilization. It begins with Greece and attempts to indicate the
chief phases. It is the merest introduction to a vast and intricate
subject, which, treated adequately, would involve not only the history
of religion, of the Churches, of heresies, of persecution, but also the
history of philosophy, of the natural sciences and of political
theories. From the sixteenth century to the French Revolution nearly all
important historical events bore in some way on the struggle for freedom
of thought. It would require a lifetime to calculate, and many books to
describe, all the directions and interactions of the intellectual and
social forces which, since the fall of ancient civilization, have
hindered and helped the emancipation of reason. All one can do, all one
could do even in a much bigger volume than this, is to indicate the
general course of the struggle and dwell on some particular aspects
which the writer may happen to have specially studied.



[21] CHAPTER II

REASON FREE

(GREECE AND ROME)

WHEN we are asked to specify the debt which civilization owes to the
Greeks, their