RELIGION AND PERSECUTION.
Intolerance is one of the most general of what we may call the mental
vices. It is so general that few people seem to look upon it as a fault,
and not a few are prepared to defend it as a virtue. When it assumes an
extreme form, and its consequences are unpleasantly obvious, it may meet
with condemnation, but usually its nature is disguised under a show of
earnestness and sincere conviction. And, indeed, no one need feel called
upon to dispute the sincerity and the earnestness of the bigot. As we
have already pointed out, that may easily be seen and admitted. All that
one need remark is that sincerity is no guarantee of accuracy, and
earnestness naturally goes with a conviction strongly held, whether the
conviction be grounded on fact or fancy. The essential question is not
whether a man holds an opinion strongly, but whether he has taken
sufficient trouble to say that he has a right to have that opinion. Has
he taken the trouble to acquaint himself with the facts upon which the
expressed opinion is professedly based? Has he made a due allowance for
possible error, and for the possibility of others seeing the matter from
another and a different point of view? If these questions were frankly
and truthfully answered, it would be found that what we have to face in
the world is not so much opinion as prejudice.
Some advance in human affairs is indicated when it is found necessary to
apologise for persecution, and a still greater one when men and women
feel ashamed of it. It is some of these apologies at which we have now
to glance, and also to determine, if possible, the probable causes of
the change in opinion that has occurred in relation to the subject of
persecution.
A favourite argument with the modern religionist is that the element of
persecution, which it is admitted, has hitherto been found in
association with religion, is not due to religion as such, but results
from its connection with the secular power. Often, it is argued, the
State for its own purposes has seen fit to ally itself with the Church,
and when that has taken place the representatives of the favoured Church
have not been strong enough to withstand the temptation to use physical
force in the maintenance of their position. Hence the generalization
that a State Church is always a persecuting Church, with the corollary
that a Church, as such, has nothing to do with so secular a thing as
persecution.
The generalization has all the attractiveness which appeals to those who
are not in the habit of looking beneath the surface, and in particular
to those whose minds are still in thraldom to religious beliefs. It is
quite true that State Churches have always persecuted, and it is equally
true that persecution on a general scale could not have been carried on
without the assistance of the State. On the other hand, it is just as
true that all Churches have persecuted within the limits of their
opportunity. There is no exception to this rule in any age or country.
On a wider survey it is also clear that all forms of religious belief
carry with them a tendency to persecution more or less marked. A close
examination of the facts will show that it is the tendency to toleration
that is developed by the secular power, and the opposite tendency
manifested by religion.
It is also argued that intolerance is not a special quality of religion;
it is rather a fault of human nature. There is more truth in this than
in the previous plea, but it slurs over the indictment rather than meets
it. At any rate, it is the same human nature that meets us in religion
that fronts us in other matters, and there is no mistaking the fact that
intolerance is far more pronounced in relation to religion than to any
other subject. In secular matters--politics, science, literature, or
art--opinions may differ, feelings run high, and a degree of intolerance
be exhibited, but the right to differ remains unquestioned. Moreover,
the settlement of opinion by discussion is recognized. In religion it is
the very right of difference that is challenged, it is the right of
discussion that is denied. And it is in connection with religion alone
that intolerance is raised to the level of a virtue. Refusal to discuss
the validity of a religious opinion will be taken as the sign of a
highly developed spiritual nature, and a tolerance of diverging opinions
as an indication of unbelief. If a political leader refused to stand
upon the same platform with political opponents, on non-political
questions, nearly everyone would say that such conduct was intolerable.
But how many religious people are there who would see anything wrong in
the Archbishop of Canterbury refusing to stand upon the same platform as
a well-known Atheist?
We are here approaching the very heart of the subject, and in what
follows I hope to make clear the truth of the following propositions:
(1) That the great culture ground of intolerance is religion; (2) That
the natural tendency of secular affairs is to breed tolerance; (3) That
the alliance of religion with the State has fostered persecution by the
State, the restraining influences coming from the secular half of the
partnership; (4) That the decline of persecution is due to causes that
are quite unconnected with religious beliefs.
The first three points can really be taken together. So far as can be
seen there is no disinclination among primitive peoples to discuss the
pros and cons of matters that are unconnected with religious beliefs. So
soon as we get people at a culture stage where the course of events is
seen to be decided by human action, there goes on a tolerance of
conflicting opinions that is in striking contrast with what occurs with
such matters as are believed to directly involve the action of deity.
One could not expect things to be otherwise. In the carrying on of
warfare, as with many other tribal activities, so many of the
circumstances are of a determinable character, and are clearly to be
settled by an appeal to judgment and experience, that very early in
social history they must have presented themselves as a legitimate field
for discussion, and to discussion, as Bagehot says, nothing is sacred.
And as a matter of fact we have a survival of this to-day. However
intolerant the character, so long as we are dealing with secular matters
it is admitted that differences of opinion must be tolerated, and are,
indeed, necessary if we are to arrive at the wisest conclusion. The most
autocratic of monarchs will call upon his advisers and take their
dissension from his own views as a matter of course. But when we get to
the field of religion, it is no longer a question of the legitimacy of
difference, but of its wrongness. For a religious man to admit a
discussion as to whether his religious belief is founded on fact or not
is to imply a doubt, and no thoroughly religious man ever encourages
that. What we have is prayers to be saved from doubt, and deliberate
efforts to keep away from such conditions and circumstances as may
suggest the possibility of wrong. The ideal religious character is the
one who never doubts.
It may also be noted, in passing, that in connection with religion there
is nothing to check intolerance at any stage. In relation to secular
matters an opinion is avowedly based upon verifiable facts and has no
value apart from those facts. The facts are common property, open to
all, and may be examined by all. In religion facts of a common and
verifiable kind are almost wanting. The facts of the religious life are
mainly of an esoteric character--visions, intuitions, etc. And while on
the secular side discussion is justified because of the agreement which
results from it, on the religious side the value of discussion is
discounted because it never does lead to agreement. The more people
discuss religion the more pronounced the disagreement. That is one
reason why the world over the only method by which people have been
brought to a state of agreement in religious doctrines is by excluding
all who disagreed. It is harmony in isolation.
Now if we turn to religion we can see that from the very beginning the
whole tendency here was to stifle difference of opinion, and so
establish intolerance as a religious duty. The Biblical story of Jonah
is a case that well illustrates the point. God was not angry with the
rest of the ship's inhabitants, it was Jonah only who had given offence.
But to punish Jonah a storm was sent and the whole crew was in danger of
shipwreck. In their own defence the sailors were driven to throw Jonah
overboard. Jonah's disobedience was not, therefore, his concern alone.
All with him were involved; God was ready to punish the whole for the
offence of one.
Now if for the ship we take a primitive tribe, and for Jonah a primitive
heretic, or one who for some reason or other has omitted a service to
the gods, we have an exact picture of what actually takes place. In
primitive societies rights are not so much individual as they are
social. Every member of the tribe is responsible to the members of other
tribes for any injury that may have been done. And as with the members
of another tribe, so with the relation of the tribe to the gods. If an
individual offends them the whole of the tribe may suffer. There is a
splendid impartiality about the whole arrangement, although it lacks all
that we moderns understand by Justice. But the point here is that it
makes the heretic not merely a mistaken person, but a dangerous
character. His heresy involves treason to the tribe, and in its own
defence it is felt that the heretic must be suppressed. How this feeling
lingers in relation to religion is well seen in the fact that there are
still with us large numbers of very pious people who are ready to see in
a bad harvest, a war, or an epidemic, a judgment of God on the whole of
the people for the sins of a few. It is this element that has always
given to religious persecutions the air of a solemn duty. To suppress
the heretic is something that is done in the interests of the whole of
the people. Persecution becomes both a religious and a social duty.
The pedigree of religious persecution is thus clear. It is inherent in
religious belief, and to whatever extent human nature is prone to
intolerance, the tendency has been fostered and raised to the status of
a virtue by religious teaching and practice. Religion has served to
confuse man's sense of right here as elsewhere.
We have thus two currents at work. On the one hand, there is the
influence of the secular side of life, which makes normally for a
greater tolerance of opinion, on the other side there is religion which
can only tolerate a difference of opinion to the extent that religious
doctrines assume a position of comparative unimportance. Instead of it
being the case that the Church has been encouraged to persecute by the
State, the truth is the other way about. I know all that may be said as
to the persecutions that have been set on foot by vested interests and
by governments, but putting on one side the consideration that this begs
the question of how far it has been the consequence of the early
influence of religion, there are obvious limits beyond which a secular
persecution cannot go. A government cannot destroy its subjects, or if
it does the government itself disappears. And the most thorough scheme
of exploitation must leave its victims enough on which to live. There
are numerous considerations which weigh with a secular government and
which have little weight with a Church.
It may safely be said, for example, that no government in the world, in
the absence of religious considerations would have committed the
suicidal act which drove the Moors and the Jews from Spain.[24] As a
matter of fact, the landed aristocracy of Spain resisted suggestions for
expulsions for nearly a century because of the financial ruin they saw
would follow. It was the driving power of religious belief that finally
brought about the expulsion. Religion alone could preach that it was
better for the monarch to reign over a wilderness than over a nation of
Jews and unbelievers. The same thing was repeated a century later in the
case of the expulsion of the Huguenots from France. Here again the crown
resisted the suggestions of the Church, and for the same reason. And it
is significant that when governments have desired to persecute in their
own interests they have nearly always found it advantageous to do so
under the guise of religion. So far, and in these instances, it may be
true that the State has used religion for its own purpose of
persecution, but this does not touch the important fact that, given the
sanction of religion, intolerance and persecution assume the status of
virtues. And to the credit of the State it must be pointed out that it
has over and over again had to exert a restraining influence in the
quarrels of sects. It will be questioned by few that if the regulative
influence of the State had not been exerted the quarrels of the sects
would have made a settled and orderly life next to impossible.
[24] For this, as well as for the general consequences of persecution on
racial welfare, see my pamphlet _Creed and Character_.
So far as Christianity is concerned it would puzzle the most zealous of
its defenders to indicate a single direction in which it did anything to
encourage the slightest modification of the spirit of intolerance.
Mohammedans can at least point to a time when, while their religion was
dominant, a considerable amount of religious freedom was allowed to
those living under its control. In the palmy days of the Mohammedan rule
in Spain both Jews and Christians were allowed to practise their
religion with only trifling inconveniences, certainly without being
exposed to the fiendish punishments that characterized Christianity all
over the world. Moreover, it must never be overlooked that in Europe all
laws against heresy are of Christian origin. In the old Roman Empire
liberty of worship was universal. So long as the State religion was
treated with a moderate amount of respect one might worship whatever god
one pleased, and the number was sufficient to provide for the most
varied tastes. When Christians were proceeded against it was under laws
that did not aim primarily to shackle liberty of worship or of opinion.
The procedure was in every case formal, the trial public, time was given
for the preparation of the defence, and many of the judges showed their
dislike to the prosecutions.[25] But with the Christians, instead of
persecution being spasmodic it was persistent. It was not taken up by
the authorities with reluctance, but with eagerness, and it was counted
as the most sacred of duties. Nor was it directed against a sectarian
movement that threatened the welfare of the State. The worst periods of
Christian persecution were those when the State had the least to fear
from internal dissension. The persecuted were not those who were guilty
of neglect of social duty. On the contrary they were serving the State
by the encouragement of literature, science, philosophy, and commerce.
One of the Pagan Emperors, the great Trajan, had advised the magistrates
not to search for Christians, and to treat anonymous accusations with
contempt. Christians carried the search for heresy into a man's own
household. It used the child to obtain evidence against its own parents,
the wife to secure evidence against the husband; it tortured to provide
dictated confessions, and placed boxes at church doors to receive
anonymous accusations. It established an index of forbidden books, an
institution absolutely unknown to the pagan world. The Roman trial was
open, the accused could hear the charge and cite witnesses for the
defence. The Christian trial was in secret; special forms were used and
no witnesses for the defence were permitted. Persecution was raised to a
fine art. Under Christian auspices it assumed the most damnable form
known in the history of the world. "There are no wild beasts so
ferocious as Christians" was the amazed comment of the Pagans on the
behaviour of Christians towards each other, and the subsequent history
of Christianity showed that the Pagans were but amateurs in the art of
punishing for a difference of opinion.
[25] I am taking the story of the persecutions of the early Christians
for granted, although the whole question is surrounded with the greatest
suspicion. As a matter of fact the accounts are grossly exaggerated, and
some of the alleged persecutions never occurred. The story of the
persecutions is so foreign to the temper of the Roman government as to
throw doubt on the whole account. The story of there being ten
persecutions is clearly false, the number being avowedly based upon the
legend of the ten plagues of Egypt.
Up to a comparatively recent time there existed a practically unanimous
opinion among Christians as to the desirability of forcibly suppressing
heretical opinions. Whatever the fortunes of Christianity, and whatever
the differences of opinion that gradually developed among Christians
there was complete unanimity on this point. Whatever changes the
Protestant Reformation effected it left this matter untouched. In his
_History of Rationalism_ Lecky has brought forward a mass of evidence in
support of this, and I must refer to that work readers who are not
already acquainted with the details. Luther, in the very act of pleading
for toleration, excepted "such as deny the common principles of the
Christian religion, and advised that the Jews should be confined as
madmen, their synagogues burned and their books destroyed." The
intolerance of Calvin has became a byword; his very apology for the
burning of Servetus, entitled _A Defence of the Orthodox Faith_, bore
upon its title page the significant sentence "In which it is proved that
heretics may justly be coerced with the sword." His follower, Knox, was
only carrying out the teaching of the master in declaring that
"provoking the people to idolatry ought not to be exempt from the
penalty of death," and that "magistrates and people are bound to do so
(inflict the death penalty) unless they will provoke the wrath of God
against themselves." In every Protestant country laws against heresy
were enacted. In Switzerland, Geneva, Sweden, England, Germany,
Scotland, nowhere could one differ from the established faith without
running the risk of torture and death. Even in America, with the
exception of Maryland,[26] the same state of things prevailed. In some
States Catholic priests were subject to imprisonment for life, Quaker
women were whipped through the streets at the cart's tail, old men of
the same denomination were pressed to death between stones. At a later
date (about 1770) laws against heresy were general. "Anyone," says
Fiske,--
who should dare to speculate too freely about the nature of Christ,
or the philosophy of the plan of salvation, or to express a doubt
as to the plenary inspiration of every word between the two covers
of the Bible, was subject to fine and imprisonment. The tithing man
still arrested the Sabbath-breakers, and shut them up in the town
cage in the market-place; he stopped all unnecessary riding or
driving on Sunday, and haled people off to the meeting-house
whether they would or no.[27]
[26] The case of Maryland is peculiar. But the reason for the toleration
there seems to have been due to the desire to give Catholics a measure
of freedom they could not have elsewhere in Protestant countries.
[27] For a good sketch of the Puritan Sunday in New England see _The
Sabbath in Puritan New England_, by Alice Morse Earle. For an account of
religious intolerance see the account of the Blue Laws of Connecticut as
contained in Hart's _American History told by Contemporaries_, Vol. I.
And we have to remember that the intolerance shown in America was
manifested by men who had left their own country on the ostensible
ground of freedom of conscience. As a matter of fact, in Christian
society genuine freedom of conscience was practically unknown. What was
meant by the expression was the right to express one's own religious
opinions, with the privilege of oppressing all with whom one happened to
disagree. The majority of Christians would have as indignantly
repudiated the assertion that they desired to tolerate non-Christian or
anti-Christian opinions as they would the charge of themselves holding
Atheistic ones.
How deeply ingrained was the principle that the established religion was
justified in suppressing all others may be seen from a reading of such
works as Locke's _Letters on Toleration_, and Milton's _Areopagitica_,
which stand in the forefront of the world's writings in favour of
liberty of thought and speech. Yet Locke was of opinion that "Those are
not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises,
covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no
hold upon an Atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in
thought, dissolves all." And Milton, while holding that it was more
prudent and wholesome that many be tolerated rather than all compelled,
yet hastened to add "I mean not tolerated popery and open superstition,
which as it extirpates all religious and civil supremacies so should
itself be extirpated." In short, intolerance had become so established a
part of a society saturated in religion that not even the most liberal
could conceive a state of being in which all opinions should be placed
upon an equal footing.
Yet a change was all the time taking place in men's opinions on this
matter, a change which has in recent years culminated in the affirmation
of the principle that the coercion of opinion is of all things the least
desirable and the least beneficial to society at large. And as in so
many other cases, it was not the gradual maturing of that principle that
attracted attention so much as its statement in something like a
complete and logical form. The tracing of the conditions which have led
to this tremendous revolution in public opinion will complete our survey
of the subject.
It has already been pointed out that in primitive societies a very
important fact is that the relation of the individual to the community
is of a different nature from that which exists in a later stage of
culture. The whole is responsible for the part in a very literal sense,
and especially so in regard to religious beliefs. Individual rights and
responsibilities have but a precarious existence at best. The individual
exists far more for the benefit of the tribe than the tribe can be said
to exist for the benefit of the individual. The sense of corporate
responsibility is strong, and even in secular affairs we see this
constantly manifested. When a member of one tribe inflicts an injury
upon a member of another tribe, retaliation on any one of the group to
which the offending person belongs will suffice. We see the remnants of
this primitive view of life in the feuds of schoolboys, and it is also
manifested in the relations of nations, which move upon a lower ethical
level than do individuals. Most wars are ostensibly waged because in
some obscure way the nation is held responsible for the offences of one
or more individuals. And an instance of the same feeling is seen in the
now obsolete practice of punishing the members of a man's family when
the parents happen to have committed certain offences.
In religion, as we have already pointed out, the sense of corporate
responsibility completely governs primitive man's sense of his relation
to the tribal gods. In the development of the tribal chief into the
tribal god the ghost is credited with much the same powers as the man,
with the added terror of having more subtle and terrible ways of
inflicting punishment. The man who offends the ghost or the god is a
standing danger to the whole of the tribe. The whole of the tribe
becomes responsible for the offence committed, and the tribe in self
protection must not alone take measures to punish the offender, but must
also guard itself against even the possibility of the offence being
perpetrated. The consequence is that there is not a religion in which
one can fail to trace the presence of this primitive conception of
personal and social responsibility, and consequently, where we cannot
find persecution, more or less severe, and also more or less organized,
in the interest of what is believed to be social welfare. In the case of
the failure of the Spanish Armada to effect the conquest of England, the
Spanish monarch was convinced that its non-success was partly due to his
not having weeded out the heretics from his own dominion before
troubling about the heretics abroad. And right down to our own day there
has not been a national calamity the cause of which has not been found
by numbers of religious people to lie in the fact that some members of
the suffering nation have offended God. The heretic becomes, as we have
already said, a social danger of the gravest description. Society must
be guarded against his presence just as we learn to-day to protect
ourselves against the presence of a death-dealing germ. The suppression
of heresy thus becomes a social duty, because it protects society from
the anger of the gods. The destruction of the heretic is substantially
an act of social sanitation. Given the primitive conception of religion,
affiliated to the existing conception of corporate responsibility, and
persecution becomes one of the most important of social duties.
This, I believe, is not alone the root of persecution, but it serves to
explain as nothing else can its persistence in social life and the fact
of its having became almost a general mental characteristic. To realize
this one need only bear in mind the overpowering part played by
religious conceptions in early communities. There is nothing done that
is not more or less under the assumed control of supernatural agencies.
Fear is the dominant emotion in relation to the gods, and experience
daily proves that there is nothing that can make men so brutal and so
callous to the sufferings of others as can religious belief. And while
there has all along been a growing liberation of the mind from the
control of religion, the process has been so slow that this particular
product of religious rule has had time to root itself very deeply in
human nature. And it is in accordance with all that we know of the order
of development that the special qualities engendered by a particular set
of conditions should persist long after the conditions themselves have
passed away.
The conditions that co-operate in the final breaking down of the
conviction of the morality of persecution are many and various.
Primarily, there is the change from the social state in which the
conception of corporate responsibility is dominant to one in which there
is a more or less clearly marked line between what concerns the
individual alone and what concerns society as a whole. This is
illustrated in the growth from what Spencer called the military type of
society to an industrial one. In the case of a militant type of society,
to which the religious organization is so closely affiliated, a State is
more self contained, and the governing principle is, to use a
generalization of Sir Henry Maine's, status rather than contract. With
the growth of commerce and industrialism there is developed a greater
amount of individual initiative, a growing consideration for personal
responsibility, and also the development of a sense of interdependence
between societies. And the social developments that go on teach people,
even though the lesson may be unconsciously learned, to value each
other in terms of social utility rather than in terms of belief in
expressed dogmas. They are brought daily into contact with men of widely
differing forms of opinion; they find themselves working in the same
movements, and participating in the same triumphs or sharing the same
defeats. Insensibly the standard of judgment alters; the strength of the
purely social feelings overpowers the consciousness of theological
differences, and thus serves to weaken the frame of mind from which
persecution springs.
The growing complexity of life leads to the same end. Where the
conditions of life are simple, and the experiences through which people
pass are often repeated, and where, moreover, the amount of positive
knowledge current is small, conclusions are reached rapidly, and the
feeling of confidence in one's own opinions is not checked by seeing
others draw different conclusions from the same premises. Under such
conditions an opinion once formed is not easily or quickly changed.
Experience which makes for wider knowledge makes also for greater
caution in forming opinions and a greater readiness to tolerate
conclusions of an opposite character at which others may have arrived.
Finally, on the purely intellectual side one must reckon with the growth
of new ideas, and of knowledge that is in itself quite inconsistent with
the established creed. If the primary reason for killing the heretic is
that he is a social danger, one who will draw down on the tribe the
vengeance of the gods, the strength of that feeling against the heretic
must be weakened by every change that lessens men's belief in the power
of their deity. And one must assume that every time a fresh piece of
definite knowledge was acquired towards the splendid structure that now
meets us in the shape of modern science there was accomplished
something that involved an ultimate weakening of the belief in the
supremacy of the gods. The effect is cumulative, and in time it is bound
to make itself felt. Religious opinion after religious opinion finds
itself attacked and its power weakened. Things that were thought to be
solely due to the action of the gods are found to occur without their
being invoked, while invocation does not make the slightest difference
to the production of given results. Scientific generalizations in
astronomy, in physics, in biology, etc., follow one another, each
helping to enforce the lesson that it really does not matter what
opinions a man may hold about the gods provided his opinions about the
world in which he is living and the forces with which he _must_ deal are
sound and solidly based. In a world where opinion is in a healthy state
of flux it is impossible for even religion to remain altogether
unchanged. So we have first a change in the rigidity of religious
conceptions, then a greater readiness to admit the possibility of error,
and, finally, the impossibility of preventing the growth and expression
of definitely non-religious and anti-religious opinions in a community
where all sorts of opinions cannot but arise.
With the social consequences of religious persecution, and particularly
of Christian persecution, I have dealt elsewhere, and there is no need
to repeat the story here. I have been here concerned with making plain
the fact that persecution does not arise with a misunderstanding of
religion, or with a decline of what is vaguely called "true religion,"
nor does it originate in the alliance of some Church with the secular
State. It lies imbedded in the very nature of religion itself. With
polytheism there is a certain measure of toleration to gods outside the
tribe, because here the admitted existence of a number of gods is part
of the order of things. But this tendency to toleration disappears when
we come to the monotheistic stage which inevitably treats the claim to
existence of other gods in the same spirit as an ardent royalist treats
the appearance of a pretender to the throne. To tolerate such is a crime
against the legitimate ruler. And when we get the Christian doctrine of
eternal damnation and salvation tacked on to the religious idea we have
all the material necessary to give the persecutor the feeling of moral
obligation, and to make him feel that he is playing the part of a real
saviour to society.
At bottom that is one of the chief injuries that a religion such as
Christianity inflicts on the race; it throws human feeling into some of
the most objectionable forms, and provides a religious and moral
justification for their expression. The very desire to benefit one's
fellows, normally and naturally healthy, thus becomes under Christian
influences an instrument of oppression and racial degradation. The
Christian persecutor does not see himself for what he is, he pictures
himself as a saviour of men's souls by suppressing the unbeliever who
would corrupt them. And if Christianity be true he is correct in
thinking himself such. I have no hesitation in saying that if
Christianity be true persecution becomes the most important of duties. A
community that is thoroughly Christian is bound to persecute, and as a
mere matter of historic fact every wholly Christian community has
persecuted. The community which says that a man may take any religion he
pleases, or go without one altogether if he so chooses, proclaims its
disbelief in the importance of religion. The measure of religious
freedom is also the measure of religious indifference.
There are some experiences through which a human being may pass the
effects of which he never completely outgrows. Usually he may appear to
have put them quite out of his mind, but there are times when he is
lifted a little out of the normal, and then the recollection of what he
has passed through comes back with terrifying force. And acute observers
may also be able to perceive that even in normal circumstances what he
has passed through manifests itself for the worse in his everyday
behaviour. So with religion and the life history of the race. For
thousands of generations the race has been under the influence of a
teaching that social welfare depended upon a right belief about the
gods. The consequence of this has been that persecution became deeply
ingrained in human nature and in the social traditions which play so
large a part in the character building of each new generation. We have
as yet hardly got beyond the tradition that lack of religion robs a man
of social rights and dispenses with the necessity for courteous and
considered treatment. And there is, therefore, small cause for wonder
that the element of intolerance should still manifest itself in
connection with non-religious aspects of life. But the certain thing is
that throughout the whole of our social history it is religion that has
been responsible for the maintenance of persecution as a social duty.
Something has been done in more recent times to weaken its force, the
growth of science, the rationalizing of one institution after
another--in a word, the secularizing of life--is slowly creating more
tolerant relations between people. But the poison is deep in the blood,
and will not be eradicated in a generation. Religion is still here, and
so long as it remains it will never cease--under the guise of an appeal
to the higher sentiments of man--to make its most effective appeals to
passions of which the best among us are most heartily ashamed.