It takes centuries of work by the sharpest and most curious minds to bring to light some particular of knowledge, whereupon it takes only moments for any fool to declare it self-evident. That, say, the blueness of the sky is owed to an unconscious physical process rather than the daily interventions of a god is not at all self-evident. Only presumptuous thoughtlessness or linguistic misusage could declare it so. Hitherto it was assumed that the gods had a hand in everything, and now it is assumed that they have a hand in nothing. Neither can be described as self-evident — except by fools in loose-tonguedness or in receipt of beliefs or facts that they would never have had the wit to decide or discover for themselves.
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