You have known a politician. . . . Your friend is married and. . . .
Brother, it is impossible. You must not say so anyway: the whole
fabric of Society will be shaken. You must not think so for a moment.

_You must not think so_. That is the creed of the new censorship.
And very sensible, too. It is an odd thing that the Middle Ages of the
Inquisition were so nonsensical, judged by our standards. Grand
inquisitors cared remarkably little how a man thought provided he did
not say what he thought too publicly. If he went to church once a year
he might be a Jew for all their interference. If he signed the
Thirty-nine Articles he might use a rosary in his own home. If
Columbus thought the world was round, he was welcome to go and see,
but if Galileo said that the Church was wrong for saying the world was
flat, there was nothing for it but to shut him up in prison. It was
all rather stupid, but it was interesting.

For above all things, the limits of censorship were well defined.
Censorship was based on hypotheses. It was conceived that Almighty God
had established St. Peter as a censor of public faith and morals, but
it was not maintained that he was established as the censor of art and
literature and life. There was thus originality in all these affairs.
In a mediaeval town every house was different, in a mediaeval
cathedral no two pillars were alike, and in the dress of a mediaeval
crowd was captured the colours of the rainbow. With an odd result. Men
laughed at the devil in the freedom of their souls. They tweaked his
tail on carven misericords, and in the mystery play he was invariably
cast for the clown.

Further, and in close accord with this, a pleasant feature of the old
Inquisition was that it tried and burnt you for the good of your own