This must be done all the more arbitrarily because it is not possible
to make the ordinary moral man understand what toleration and liberty
really mean. He will accept them verbally with alacrity, even with
enthusiasm, because the word toleration has been moralized by eminent
Whigs; but what he means by toleration is toleration of doctrines
that he considers enlightened, and, by liberty, liberty to do what he
considers right: that is, he does not mean toleration or liberty at all;
for there is no need to tolerate what appears enlightened or to claim
liberty to do what most people consider right. Toleration and liberty
have no sense or use except as toleration of opinions that are
considered damnable, and liberty to do what seems wrong. Setting
Englishmen free to marry their deceased wife's sisters is not tolerated
by the people who approve of it, but by the people who regard it
as incestuous. Catholic Emancipation and the admission of Jews to
parliament needed no toleration from Catholics and Jews: the toleration
they needed was that of the people who regarded the one measure as
a facilitation of idolatry, and the other as a condonation of the
crucifixion. Clearly such toleration is not clamored for by the
multitude or by the press which reflects its prejudices. It is
essentially one of those abnegations of passion and prejudice which the
common man submits to because uncommon men whom he respects as wiser
than himself assure him that it must be so, or the higher affairs of
human destiny will suffer.
Such admission is the more difficult because the arguments against
tolerating immorality are the same as the arguments against tolerating
murder and theft; and this is why the Censor seems to the inconsiderate
as obviously desirable a functionary as the police magistrate. But there
is this simple and tremendous difference between the cases: that whereas
no evil can conceivably result from the total suppression of murder
and theft, and all communities prosper in direct proportion to such
suppression, the total suppression of immorality, especially in matters
of religion and sex, would stop enlightenment, and produce what used
to be called a Chinese civilization until the Chinese lately took to
immoral courses by permitting railway contractors to desecrate the
graves of their ancestors, and their soldiers to wear clothes which
indecently revealed the fact that they had legs and waists and even
posteriors. At about the same moment a few bold Englishwomen ventured on
the immorality of riding astride their horses, a practice that has since
established itself so successfully that before another generation has
passed away there may not be a new side-saddle in England or a woman who
could use it if there was.