premise: Perhaps I should apologize for my tears. As a rationalist, I had but to snap my rational fingers, it might be argued, and the devil would fade away in a puff of smoke. To which I might say that rationalist or not I had spent too many years in my capacity as church architect investigating the fossils of a dead faith not to have imbibed something of the old superstitions.
hypothesis: he had spent too many years in his capacity as church architect investigating the fossils of a dead faith not to have imbibed something of the old superstitions