Editing Gothic Horror (section)

===Crimes Against Reason===
The light of reason can penetrate the darkness of corrupt and unnatural practices; those who deliberately blind themselves to it are courting the darkness.

Dark forces are arrayed against the new Age of Reason. Superstition, mysticism, and religion are shadows from the past that would cripple this new rationality and everything it has accomplished. Pernicious superstitions or very traditional priests are signs that reason is weakening its hold over an area. If an antagonist deliberately turns aside from rational thought and trusts instead to the occult to gain power or knowledge, he risks losing touch with civilization. The powers of unreason can drive a man insane, reducing him to a primitive, almost animal state.

The gothic hero is a modern creature, with modem sensibilities. He believes that it is by reason alone that man can hope to find out where and why nature's laws have been broken, and only an open mind, uncorrupted by the darkness, can bring these powers of reason to bear. A strange report may turn out to have a rational explanation, but there is always a moment when investigators are not entirely sure of reason's reign.

Crimes against sensibility are horrific because they strike at the heart of everything in which rational Victorians believe. If they cannot trust their logical thought processes, then perhaps the world is truly insane. Supernatural creatures are terrifying because reason says that they cannot exist.