It is still common to speak of the personnel of the Inquisition as disinterested, and to class its crimes as "conscientious." Buckle set up such a thesis, without due circumspection, as a support to one of his generalizations. (See the present writer's ed. of his Introduction to the History of Civilization in England, pp. 105-108, notes, and the passages in McCrie and Llorente there cited.) Dr. Lea, whose History of the Inquisition is the greatest storehouse of learning on the subject, takes up a similar position, arguing (i, 239): "That the men who conducted the Inquisition, and who toiled sedulously in its arduous, repulsive, and often dangerous labour, were thoroughly convinced that they were furthering the kingdom of God, is shown by the habitual practice of encouraging them with the remission of sins, similar to that offered for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land"--a somewhat surprising theorem. Parallel reasoning would prove that soldiers never plunder and are always Godly; that the crusaders were all conscientious men; and that policemen never take bribes or commit perjury. The interpretation of history calls for a less simple-minded psychology. That there were devoted fanatics in the Inquisition as in the Church is not to be disputed; that both organizations had economic bases is certain; and that the majority of office-bearers in both, in the ages of faith, had regard to gain, is demonstrated by all ecclesiastical history. Dr. Lea's own History shows clearly enough (i, 471-533) that the Inquisition, from the first generation of its existence, lived upon its fines and confiscations. "Persecution, as a steady and continuous policy, rested, after all, upon confiscation.... When it was lacking, the business of defending the faith lagged lamentably" (i, 529). "But for the gains to be made out of fines and confiscations its [the Inquisition's] work would have been much less thorough, and it would have sunk into comparative insignificance as soon as the first frantic zeal of bigotry had exhausted itself" (pp. 532-33). Why, in the face of these avowals, "it would be unjust to say that greed and thirst for plunder were the impelling motives of the Inquisition" (p. 532) is not very clear. See below, ch. x, § 3, as to the causation in Spain. Cp. Mocatta, The Jews and the Inquisition, pp. 37, 44, 52. On the Inquisition in Portugal, in turn, Professor W. E. Collins sums up that "it was founded for reasons ostensibly religious but actually fiscal" (in the "Cambridge Modern History," vol. ii, The Reformation, ch. xii, p. 415). Every charge of economic motive that Catholicism can bring against Protestantism is thus balanced by the equivalent charge against its own Inquisition. § 5. FREETHOUGHT IN THE SCHOOLS