Muggeridge: ‘Positivism will deprive man, not only of all objects of religious reverence, but of all objects of the reverence which great philosopher… - David Stove

From an Enlightenment or Positivist point of view, which is Hume's point of view, and mine, there is simply no avoiding the conclusion that the human race is mad. There are scarcely any human beings who do not have some lunatic beliefs or other to which they attach great importance. People are mostly sane enough, of course, in the affairs of common life: the getting of food, shelter, and so on. But the moment they attempt any depth or generality of thought, they go mad almost infallibly. The vast majority, of course, adopt the local religious madness, as naturally as they adopt the local dress. But the more powerful minds will, equally infallibly, fall into the worship of some intelligent and dangerous lunatic, such as Plato, or Augustine, or Comte, or Hegel, or Marx.

The proprietor of a pornographic book shop may be dimly conscious of a debt to the author of Areopagitica, but Milton is the last person he wants to see in his shop.

A philosopher may try to prove the truth of something he believed before he was a philosopher, but even if he succeeds, his belief never regains the untroubled character, and the settled place in his mind, which it had at first.