think for myself." But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, "I
have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all."

There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that
ought to be stopped. That is the ultimate evil against which all
religious authority was aimed. It only appears at the end of decadent
ages like our own: and already Mr. H.G. Wells has raised its ruinous
banner; he has written a delicate piece of scepticism called "Doubts of
the Instrument." In this he questions the brain itself, and endeavours
to remove all reality from all his own assertions, past, present, and to
come. But it was against this remote ruin that all the military systems
in religion were originally ranked and ruled. The creeds and the
crusades, the hierarchies and the horrible persecutions were not
organized, as is ignorantly said, for the suppression of reason. They
were organized for the difficult defence of reason. Man, by a blind
instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could
be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve, the authority
of popes to define the authority, even of inquisitors to terrify: these
were all only dark defences erected round one central authority, more
undemonstrable, more supernatural than all--the authority of a man to
think. We know now that this is so; we have no excuse for not knowing
it. For we can hear scepticism crashing through the old ring of
authorities, and at the same moment we can see reason swaying upon her
throne. In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are
both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They are both methods
of proof which cannot themselves be proved. And in the act of
destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the
idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a
long and sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre off
pontifical man; and his head has come off with it.