Such minds as these, settled as it were from the outset, are either
incapable of real scepticism or become sceptical only after catastrophic
changes. They understand the sceptical mind with difficulty, and their
beliefs are regarded by the sceptical mind with incredulity. They have
determined their forms of belief before their years of discretion, and
once those forms are determined they are not very easily changed. Within
the shell it has adopted the intelligence may be active and lively
enough, may indeed be extraordinarily active and lively, but only within
the shell.

There is an entire difference in the mental quality of those who are
converts to a faith and those who are brought up in it. The former know
it from outside as well as from within. They know not only that it is,
but also that it is not. The latter have a confidence in their creed
that is one with their apprehension of sky or air or gravitation. It
is a primary mental structure, and they not only do not doubt but they
doubt the good faith of those who do. They think that the Atheist and
Agnostic really believe but are impelled by a mysterious obstinacy to
deny. So it had been with the Bishop of Princhester; not of cunning
or design but in simple good faith he had accepted all the inherited
assurances of his native rectory, and held by Church, Crown, Empire,
decorum, respectability, solvency--and compulsory Greek at the Little
Go--as his father had done before him. If in his undergraduate days he
had said a thing or two in the modern vein, affected the socialism
of William Morris and learnt some Swinburne by heart, it was out of a
conscious wildness. He did not wish to be a prig. He had taken a far
more genuine interest in the artistry of ritual.

Through all the time of his incumbency of the church of the Holy
Innocents, St. John's Wood, and of his career as the bishop suffragan