There is one virtue which we implicitly assume when we discuss
philosophy, and usually invoke when we venture to discuss religion. It
is the favorite "intellectual virtue" of our time: for, as the sophists
disquietingly remarked in their day, and as Professor Sumner shows in
_Folkways_, moral touchstones, like clothes, are subject to change of
fashion; those of a former generation, taken for granted in all
soberness, rise out of old books with a quaintness like that of the
"y^e" and the long "s" of our forefathers. The "great, the awful, the
respectable virtues," such as godliness and righteousness, as terms of
approval, are seldom on our lips; the old stalwart, rigid qualities are
less admired today than those which are more gracious and humane--than
flexibility of mind, universal sympathy, open vision.
But these latter in their turn we have now accepted as ideals, with no
warning Socrates at our elbow to demand: "Precisely what do you mean by
these new standards which you take for granted?"
"Toleration is so prodigious an impiety," said a member of the
Westminster Assembly, "that this religious parliament cannot but abhor
the meaning of it." Yet, in that constant gradual "transvaluation of all
values" which humanity performs, tolerance has become the golden word of
modern thought. And, like all popular ideas, it is unthinkingly accepted
and facilely claimed. Even those who admit that they have not attained
full measure of it, hide themselves behind the remark: "I am tolerant of
everything except intolerance," and thereby yield them altogether: for
to be tolerant only of a corresponding tolerance, is like confining your
courtesy to polite people. The only attitude which tests the quality of
tolerance is precisely the intolerant attitude.
But passing by these simple folk, we may yet find in the more
serious-minded the sense of an inconsistency in the very conception,
which puts it forever beyond our reach. We may be undertaking the
difficult experiment of eating our cake and having it too. Yet even so
there may be a refuge: for if paradox should prove to be the final form of
truth--a union of opposites present in all living facts--inconsistency
will have no devastating effect on it. The very fabric of truth may be
woven of just such contradictions; reality may _never_ be consistent.
But whether or no this be the way out, there are plainly difficulties
to be considered, if we are to understand, and at the same time
accept, the ideal of tolerance.
At the outset the distinction must be drawn between outward physical
toleration and the inward spiritual grace of tolerance. In the first
place, tolerance refers to thought, not to conduct. That heretics are no
longer burned at the stake is the outcome of a change in social policy;
in so far as this change is more than the discovery that heretics are
after all not dangerous to the state, it is due to the obvious fact that
where there is no clearly delineated, uniform orthodoxy, there can be no
heresy--the species is extinct. Whenever the government in power
concludes that an idea _is_ dangerous to the state, it does not hesitate
to break through whatever safeguards to individual liberty of opinion
may have been erected in the past. If such action is not legally
justified, it is at once shown that laws are dead things, powerless
against living human fears and needs. The application of the
Defense-of-the-Realm act in England to distributing copies of the
hitherto innocuous Sermon on the Mount, is evidence enough that the
governmental attitude towards the subject has not changed in principle.
And if, in addition to fear, we have a sharply defined orthodox view, we
find that, though ordinary people no longer advocate capital punishment
for doubting the Trinity, they did attempt to lynch Max Eastman for
doubting the righteousness of the war. In other words, we have ceased to
believe that religious opinions matter to social conduct, while still
believing that political opinions do.
The genuine intolerance of the middle ages rested on a different basis.
We say: Think what you please, so long as you act in conformity with
what public opinion pleases. Plenty of anarchists and pacifists and
upholders of the Susan B. Anthony Federal Amendment are still at large
because their actions, though not their thoughts, are orthodox. The
Inquisition struck deeper, because it was convinced of the genuine
importance of thought, in relation to conduct. It was not content with
binding the heretic to hold his peace--he must recant. It was so utterly
convinced that not merely expediency, but final universal truth, lay in
its keeping, that mere error, in the face of this revealed truth, became
the ultimate sin.
The question of the meaning of tolerance, then, if it is not simply a
matter of social usage, becomes the question, How far is it compatible
with conviction? Tolerance may be defined as willingness to sanction the
existence of views at variance with our own. The point at issue is not
the expression of such views; the most intolerant man may egg on his
opponent to complete expression, that he may argue him out of his error.
The real tolerance refers to the relation of thought to thought, not of
thought to speech. The above definition is one which, I believe, the
seeker after tolerance will agree to accept (I have tried it on
several). And yet, though presenting a fair idea of the attitude, it
holds within itself the difficulty which puts the ideal out of reach.
This inherent contradiction may be stated, in the terms of our
definition, thus: we are willing for an opposite view to exist _only_
when we are not entirely convinced that our own view is true. The real
belief in absolute truth is a missionary state of mind, and carries with
it the faith that truth is the one thing worth having. In our day, the
infinite variety of ideas which custom does not stale, has long forced
itself upon our attention. In consequence we no longer share the faith
of Plato that knowledge, as distinct from opinion, can be secured. We
cannot believe anything quite as firmly as the mediaeval Catholic
believed in an eternal church independent of argument, or indeed of
humanity. If we could, we should be as intolerant as Billy Sunday, whom
"the pale cast of thought" has never tinged, and, if we were
metaphysicians, should go up and down the world preaching the dangers of
neo-realism, as the evangelist fulminates against the blasphemy of
biological evolution. But Billy Sunday is an inverted anachronism; it is
not in the power of a modern of the _commencement de siecle_ to
recapture his fine careless rapture.
If this be true, if we have grown too modest to declare the eternal
constitution of the universe, what degree of conviction and what quality
of tolerance are left us?
The first answer is, that we may be willing to admit a view differing
from our own because we realize that both may be right. But such a
realization, if it is to be more than verbal politeness, implies that
the difference is only partial or nominal, and consequently that my
opponent's error does not shut him out from acknowledging my truth. I
may be a woman suffragist, and yet be tolerant of the views of a friend
who opposes suffrage, not on grounds of sex, but because he believes
that the suffrage is already too wide, requiring restriction rather than
enlargement. If I also am in theory an aristocrat, I can admit the
notion that both of us are in a measure right.
But the only real tests of tolerance are the far more common cases, in
which, if I am right, you must be wrong. Present species are or are not
the result of development or special creation; the world is or is not an
intelligible order; our individual personalities do or do not survive
bodily death. We cannot be content here to fall back on a different
statement of the problem. When we say: "Oh, yes, we both believe in God;
to me he is Life Force; to you, Jehovah," we know in our hearts that we
are simply conniving at the draining of all definite meaning from the
word, in order to confuse the issue and keep the peace. The one thing
needful is, not that we should find blanket terms under which we seem to
agree, but that we should drag our disagreement into the clearest
possible light, and so find out what we are talking about. Not only our
language, but our intelligence suffers from preferring vague unity to
distinct differentiation.
Even in such cases there are, however, three conditions which make
tolerance tenable. The first of them is, that we do not really care
about the issue; we have taken sides, but only because it is necessary
to hold some opinion, and so we have no active conviction. We are
tolerant because, after all, we know little about the subject, and are
willing to leave enthusiasm to experts. I have a friend who, even in the
crisis of the present war, keeps critically aloof from questions of
politics, seeming tolerant because his own position is held only
"academically"; he does not care enough about the subject for that
particular truth to seem supremely important. He is tolerant with the
ease of indifference. It is easy to give free play to ideas in which we
have no compelling interest. In consequence, many of us pretend to a
general tolerance, when the fact is, that we carefully choose our
examples from among the issues which least concern us.
Much of the modern religious tolerance is of this type. Our culture is
so predominantly pagan that Christianity has ceased to play more than a
nominal part in our tests of ideas and conduct. This tendency has
infiltrated even those who are unaware of the influence; the saving of
souls according to Christian theology has become less important than the
preservation of good taste, whose standards are set by an unconsciously
pagan public opinion. On the other hand, the prevailing paganism has not
become self-conscious, since it is hidden behind Christian words; and
few have the time or courage to look beneath words to test their
consonance with things. Being the result, not of directed effort, but of
drifting, the pagan element in our civilization is not eager to assert
itself. So the avowed pagans are tolerant of Christianity, saying: "I do
not care for it for myself, but it is good for the masses. As to the
church, for people who like that sort of thing, why, that is the sort of
thing they like." And the Christians are tolerant of pagan ideals of
self-realization, of personal pride and the worldly splendor of luxury
and art, on the ground that some of the ideals which they are supposed
to accept are after all inapplicable to modern life. Since neither cares
to assert itself for what it is, there is the mutual tolerance of
indifference. If these two ideals dared to stand forth and contest the
field, there would be an end of tolerance,--a holy war, and clearing of
the atmosphere.
The second condition of tolerance implies deeper thought on the disputed
subject than does the first. It relates to things, about which we are
not indifferent; but it indicates a mental sophistication which is too
cautious lightly to put Q. E. D. at the close of a demonstration. Our
conviction has, as it were, a string to it. I read once in a novel a
phrase like this: "He was as amazed as a Christian, who, waking after
death, should look round the universe and find that there was no God."
Imagination gives us tolerance by marring every faith with the
suggestion that we may wake up and find ourselves mistaken. And this is
just the faith that cannot remove mountains. The idea that the other
fellow may be right, paralyzes activity. Only bigots and fanatics set
fire to the world without scruple. We sit before the hearth, perhaps,
and argue about the brutality and cowardice of much of our current
morality, and the obstacles which convention often raises against a
sincere and heroic life; and yet, unspoken behind our preaching, is the
haunting fear that the wisdom of the ages may not be the hoary folly it
seems, that the melodramatic novels may be true, that considerations
unguessed may be involved--and we continue to sit before the hearth.
The presence of the little imp of skeptical imagination marks the
difference between philosophical and religious convictions. For good or
ill, the other person's point of view, once seen, cannot cease for us.
Our most ardent idealism is not a belief for which we would willingly be
martyred by the realists: for we might wake and look round the universe
in vain for an Absolute. It may be a good thing that the quality of
religious conviction has died out among us, or it may be a necessary
evil of civilized thinking. But the fact remains that we have no need of
tolerance towards views which, consciously or unconsciously, we admit
may be more nearly true than our own. We are merely not sure enough of
ourselves to risk annihilating the views of our opponents.
The third form of imperfect conviction on which tolerance may rest is
the view of truth as purely personal or relative. Subjectivism has been
used as a bad name in philosophy for so long that the suspicion of it is
usually resented. But it peers out from behind the respectable robe of
many a philosophy which has not learned to call hard names. To reduce
truth to a fact in individual experience, is to destroy the problem.
Genuine conviction, without which tolerance is a mere form devoid of
substance, is impossible if the truth for me and the truth for you are
isolated facts, having and needing no relation to each other. But little
private truths are sufficient only for little private affairs.
All of us want, and most of us take for granted, a real beauty in whose
light it is irrelevant that Longfellow is read by a larger number of
people than is Shelley. If I really love Shelley, I must believe that in
some impersonal sense _Prometheus Unbound_ is superior to _The Psalm of
Life_. This insistence upon a standard is at the root of all our serious
thinking; _de gustibus non disputandum_ is a foolish saying: for nothing
as a matter of fact is more fiercely disputed than questions of taste.
The social character of thought is so firmly rooted that a thought which
is limited to a personal impression ceases to interest us. It has become
a mere fact; and we live in a world not of mere facts but of facts which
gain their importance only through meaning. It is only of the most
trivial acts that we say: This is right for me but wrong for you,
because you think it wrong. We do not really even then put the You and
the I on the same level, but imply that you will, if properly educated,
agree with me. Human nature demands that we habitually will that the
maxim of our thought at least, should become a universal law. Only when
we apply our convictions, aesthetic, ethical, or metaphysical, to others
outside ourselves, do they become more than fancies.
If we go the whole way with Professor Sumner, for example, in the
relativity of morals, we are not really, from the standpoint of modern
Western teaching, looking tolerantly upon other theories which approve,
for instance, the summary extermination of undesirable members of the
family. We are simply refusing to adopt the morality of our own or any
other age, more seriously than as a guide of conduct whereby we avoid
punishment by society. The owning of slaves in the United States, says
Professor Sumner, is no longer expedient; but, under changes of social
and industrial conditions, it may again become so. Morality, that is, is
what its etymology implies--simply custom.
The holder of such a theory has no real conviction of the position
which, by geographical and temporal accidents, he holds. He is really
trying to place himself at the center of indifference, and his one
conviction is that all standards are relative. Of opposition to this, he
is frequently intolerant enough. The man who holds that Buddhism best
meets the religious needs of India, as Christianity satisfies the
conditions of life in the West, thinks himself tolerant of religious
differences, because all the examples are on his side; but he is
intolerant--and on his premises justly so--of missionaries, who are his
real opponents.
Such are the forms of incomplete conviction which make tolerance
plausible. There remain those attitudes which frankly abandon, for both
sides, the claim to truth in any absolute sense. Our opinions in any
case, they maintain, are but aspects of an all-embracing truth which can
be known only to a consciousness of the whole. Your opinion and mine
are, therefore, in the limited sense which is alone applicable, equally
true. But the only ideas which we can admit to have an equal claim to
partial truth, are those which are not mutually exclusive, so that the
different facets of the universal truth shall not interfere with one
another. Unless we mean simply that a variety of opinion makes the world
less dull, in which case conviction does not come in at all, we are
unable to admit that a belief diametrically opposed to our own is "just
as good," not as a foil, or a spur, to our own thinking, but in its own
right. It may be that the Bradleyan Absolute can admit contradictories
as equally true, but such mental acrobatics do not come naturally to
human thinking. Since we cannot view the world as the Absolute sees it,
we cannot, in practice, be guided by the theory that opposite answers to
living problems, set in all their complex conditions, are equally true.
The conviction that is softened by an historic sense or by use of the
terms of biological evolution, meets the same difficulty. In so far as
there is any real demand for tolerance, it must be in the conflict of
present issues. We do not need to be tolerant of the past, unless we
imagine ourselves in that past, and regard its issues as, for the time
being, contemporary with us. Ideas opposing our own may be gently dealt
with, as necessary stages of civilization. But if a stage is now no
longer necessary, the excuse fails. Cannibalism could not be defended as
a civilized practice, simply because it represents a stage of
development. Still less can we tolerate on the same ground what seems to
us wrong in modern life. For we cannot without undue vanity maintain
that the rest of mankind living under our conditions are less highly
developed than we. So the sincere pacifist, for example, cannot properly
be tolerant of war as an expression of prevailing savagery, beyond which
he has himself advanced.
The theory that opinions and institutions are justified as
"stepping-stones," survivals not yet quite outworn, always carries the
presumption that we are the apex--an assumption, of course, which
evolutionary theory does not bear out. It is possible that our seeming
progress may be retrogressive, that the true apex may have been reached
in Greece some two thousand years ago. When we look kindly upon (to us)
impossible views, with some idea of thesis and antithesis in our minds,
we are taking our own position as the synthesis, and, placing ourselves
at the standpoint of the whole, implying knowledge of that far off,
divine event towards which the Tennysonian creation moves. But if we
really think the truth of our vision worth striving for, it is dangerous
to hold our reputation for urbanity to be of more importance than
insight, by smiling down on opponents as on children at play, not worth
fighting. Imperfect as it is, our little truth must seem to us, as it
stands, better than any other, without smoothing away the stark
contradiction between it and its opposite, and without claiming for it a
higher level than for them, if it is to be at once effective and humble.
To all of this it may be answered that our idea of tolerance has been an
impossible ideal; that simply by making the definition unwarrantably
strict, the quality has been pushed out of reach; and that, on these
terms of course it cannot exist. Nevertheless the exact quality of
current attempts at tolerance is made visible in the light of that
extreme form which we have been considering: as Plato judged the success
of actual forms of the state by comparison with that perfect justice
which was to be found in none of them. But if, as the situation
suggests, the degree of tolerance is in inverse ratio to the force of
conviction, we cannot hold both as ideals. The question is, Which is the
more valid?
By assuming tolerance as a possession or even as a goal, we have lost
that driving power of conviction which more primitive, less imaginative
forms of belief still hold. Perfect tolerance would be an anaesthetic
influence; it would militate against that clash of open conflict in
which alone are ideas tested. If tolerance is to be achieved only by
proportionate weakening of conviction, the prevailing acceptance of such
an ideal may be not merely a crying for the moon, but for a burning toy
balloon which would be of no value to us if we had it.
The past few centuries have deepened the conception of tolerance, given
inner meaning as a virtue to what was originally only a convenience of
social conduct. Tolerance in act has been proved practically advisable.
It rests on the recognition that the intolerant Calvin, burning
Servetus, was a more positively objectionable member of society than the
Greek sage whose skepticism was so complete that he would commit himself
to nothing more than the wagging of his finger. But if we are right in
maintaining the incompatibility of tolerance and conviction, each
gaining ground only at the expense of the other, are we not following
the wrong star? Calvin was doubtless less pleasant to live with than the
Greek skeptic; but, since clear definition of issues is the first step
in judgment, the following of the harsher example may clear the way for
those battles of thought which change the boundaries of its territories,
when diplomacies accomplish nothing.
Socrates, according to Plato, must have spent a good many hours and days
in buttonholing young men on the streets of Athens, and pricking the
airy bubbles of the catchwords which they used so glibly. His inveterate
questioning often seemed to lead only to a deadlock. "What _is_ this
justice, this temperance, this courage, of which you seem so sure?"--he
would ask, and, after leading them a merry chase along the mazes of
thought, brought them to the reluctant conclusion that virtue is not so
simple, after all. There was something of the spirit of the detective in
this sleuthing among ideas, this quick recognition and rejection of
clues. What Socrates was chiefly trying to do--and no wonder he was
accused of corrupting the young men!--was to cultivate in his
interlocutors the rare art of questioning, to extirpate in them the
prevalent stupidity of taking things for granted.
But Socrates did not cure the world of using catchwords. In war, in
politics, in religion, even in science, they still pass for the coin of
the realm. They are always dangerous: for they always delude one into
thinking to be easy that which is in truth most difficult. There is
hardly a virtue which we can have without crowding out another virtue.
We of the twentieth century have taken tolerance for granted, as if it
were as much to be expected as good manners. And we have scarcely
thought to ask the price for which it is bought.
If it is only a utilitarian matter of social policy, to be relinquished
when that policy changes, we have done foolishly to exalt it as a moral
virtue. If we must choose between tolerance and our sense of
ascertainable truth in the world, our eyes should be open to the terms
of that choice; if we must have a slogan, shall it be, Live and Let
Live, or The Truth is Mighty and Shall Prevail? If, on the other hand,
the field of tolerance is limited to cases in which we are indifferent
or skeptical, much is to be gained in humility and sincerity by the
frank avowal. We may cut the Gordian knot, and boldly accept the
paradox. In any case, something is gained, if only that we have asked,
What do we mean by tolerance?