st. Perhaps. All
things end somehow. But if he goes down he will die like a man and not
like a coward, and have for his requiem the psalm of the tempest and the
anthem of the waves.

Doubt is the beginning of wisdom. It means caution, independence,
honesty and veracity. Faith means negligence, serfdom, insincerity and
deception. The man who never doubts never thinks. He is like a straw
in the wind or a waif on the sea. He is one of the helpless, docile,
unquestioning millions, who keep the world in a state of stagnation,
and serve as a fulcrum for the lever of despotism. The stupidity of the
people, says Whitman, is always inviting the insolence of power.

Buckle has well said that scepticism is "the necessary antecedent of
all progress." Without it we should still be groping in the night of the
Dark Ages. The very foundations of modern science and philosophy were
laid on ground which was wrested from the Church, and every stone
was cemented with the blood of martyrs. As the edifice arose the
sharpshooters of faith attacked the builders at every point, and they
still continue their old practice, although their missiles can hardly
reach the towering heights where their enemies are now at work.

Astronomy was opposed by the Church because it unsettled old notions of
the earth being the centre of the universe, and the sun, moon, and stars
mere lights stuck in the solid firmament, and worked to and fro like
sliding panels. Did not the Bible say that General Joshua commanded the
sun to stand still, and how could this have happened unless it moved
round the earth? And was not the earth certainly flat, as millions of
flats believed it to be? The Catholic Inquisition forced Galileo to
recant, and Protestant Luther called Copernicus "an old fool."

Chemistry was opposed as an impious prying into the secrets of God. It
was put in the same class with sorcery and witchcraft, and punished in
the same way. The early chemists were regarded as agents of the Devil,
and their successors are still regarded as "uncanny" in the more
ignorant parts of Christendom. Roger Bacon was persecuted by his brother
monks; his testing fire was thought to have come from the pit, and the
explosion of his gunpowder was the Devil vanishing in smoke and smell.
Even at the end of last century, the clergy-led mob of Birmingham who
wrecked Priestley s house and destroyed his apparatus, no doubt felt
that there was a close connection between chemistry and in