“Reason is itself a
matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any
relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or
later ask yourself the question, ‘Why should anything go right; even
observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad
logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?’ The young
sceptic says, ‘I have a right to 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...’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.” — English man of
letters (and Catholic convert) G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936),
Orthodoxy
(1908)
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