I read the histories of the religions and compared them, and I read the works of those writers who have risen up to attack them.

I found, or I thought that I found, the same springs of superstition in them all--superstitions arising from elementary natural causes, and handed on with variations from race to race, and time to time.

In some I found the same story, only with a slightly altered face, and I learned, moreover, that each faith denied the other, and claimed truth for itself alone.
"After that, too, I went to the college and there I fell in with a lady, one of the mistresses, who was the cleverest woman that I ever knew, and in her way a good woman, but one who believed that religion was the curse of the world, and who spent all her spare time in attacking it in some form or other.

Poor thing, she is dead now.

And so, you see, what between these causes and the continual spectacle of human misery which to my mind negatives the idea of a merciful and watching Power, at last it came to pass that the only altar left in my temple is an altar to the 'Unknown God.'" Geoffrey, like most men who have had to think on these matters, did not care to talk about them much, especially to women.