Intolerance is part of the unnecessary friction of life. It is
prejudice on the war-path. Intolerance acknowledges only one side of
any question,—its own. It is the assumption of a monopoly in thinking,
the attitude of the man who believes he has a corner on wisdom and
truth, in some phase of life.
Tolerance is a calm, generous respect for the opinions of others,
even of one's enemies. It recognizes the right of every man to think
his own thoughts, to live his own life, to be himself in all things,
so long as he does not run counter to the rights of others. It means
giving to others the same freedom that we ourselves crave. Tolerance is
silent justice, blended with sympathy. If he who is tolerant desires
to show to others the truth as he sees it, he seeks with gentleness
and deference to point out the way in which he has found peace, and
certainty, and rest; he tries to raise them to the recognition of
higher ideals, as he has found them inspiring; he endeavors in a spirit
of love and comradeship with humanity to lead others rather than to
drive them, to persuade and convince rather than to overawe and eclipse.
Tolerance does not use the battering-ram of argument or the club of
sarcasm, or the rapier of ridicule, in discussing the weakness or
wrongs of individuals. It may lash or scourge the evil of an age, but
it is kind and tender with the individual; it may flay the sin, but not
the sinner. Tolerance makes the individual regard truth as higher than
personal opinion; it teaches him to live with the windows of his life
open towards the east to catch the first rays of the sunlight of truth
no matter from whom it comes, and to realize that the faith that he so
harshly condemns may have the truth he desires if he would only look
into it and test it before he repudiates it so cavalierly.
This world of ours is growing better, more tolerant and liberal. The
days when difference in political opinions was solved and cured by the
axe and the block; when a man's courage to stand by his religion meant
facing the horrors of the Inquisition or the cruelty of the stake, when
daring to think their own thoughts on questions of science brought
noble men to a pallet of straw and a dungeon cell,—these days have,
happily, passed away. Intolerance and its twin brother, Ignorance,
weaken and die when the pure white light of wisdom is thrown upon them.
Knowledge is the death-knell of intolerance—not mere book-learning,
nor education in schools or colleges, nor accumulation of mere
statistics, nor shreds of information, but the large sympathetic study
of the lives, manners, customs, aims, thoughts, struggles, progress,
motives and ideals of other ages, other nations, other individuals.
Tolerance unites men in the closer bonds of human brotherhood,
brings them together in unity and sympathy in essentials and gives
them greater liberality and freedom in non-essentials. Napoleon when
First Consul said, "Let there be no more Jacobins, nor Moderates, nor
Royalists: let all be Frenchmen." Sectionalism and sectarianism always
mean concentration on the body of a part at the expense of the soul of
the whole. The religious world to-day needs more Christ and less sects
in its gospel. When Christ lived on earth Christianity was a unit; when
he died sects began.
There are in America to-day, hundreds of small towns, scattered over
the face of the land, that are over-supplied with churches. In many of
these towns, just emerging from the short dresses of village-hood,
there are a dozen or more weak churches, struggling to keep their
organization alive. Between these churches there is often only a slight
difference in creed, the tissue-paper wall of some technicality of
belief. Half-starved, dragging out a mere existence, trying to fight
a large mortgage with a small congregation and a small contribution
box, there is little spiritual fervor. By combination, by coöperation,
by tolerance, by the mutual surrender of non-essentials and a strong,
vital concentration and unity on the great fundamental realities
of Christianity, their spiritual health and possibilities could be
marvellously increased. Three or four sturdy, live, growing churches
would then take the place of a dozen strugglers. Why have a dozen weak
bridges across a stream, if greater good can come from three or four
stronger ones, or even a single strongest bridge? The world needs a
great religious trust which will unite the churches into a single body
of faith, to precede and prepare the way for the greater religious
trust, predicted in Holy Writ,—the millennium.
We can ever be loyal to our own belief, faithful to our own cause,
without condemning those who give their fidelity in accord with
their own conscience or desires. The great reformers of the world,
men who are honestly and earnestly seeking to solve the great social
problems and to provide means for meeting human sin and wrong,
agreeing perfectly in their estimate of the gravity and awfulness of
the situation, often propose diametrically opposite methods. They are
regarding the subject from different points of view, and it would be
intolerance for us, who are looking on, to condemn the men on either
side merely because we cannot accept their verdict as our own.
On the great national questions brought before statesmen for their
decision, men equally able, equally sincere, just and unselfish,
differ in their remedies. One, as a surgeon, suggests cutting away
the offending matter, the use of the knife,—this typifies the sword,
or war. Another, as a doctor, urges medicine that will absorb and
cure,—this is the prescription of the diplomat. The third suggests
waiting for developments, leaving the case with time and nature,—this
is the conservative. But all three classes agree as to the evil and the
need of meeting it.
The conflict of authorities on every great question to be settled by
human judgment should make us tolerant of the opinion of others, though
we may be as confident of the rightness of the judgment we have formed
as if it were foreordained from the day of the creation. But if we
receive any new light that makes us see clearer, let us change at once
without that foolish consistency of some natures that continue to use
last year's almanac as a guide to this year's eclipses. Tolerance is
ever progressive.
Intolerance believes it is born with the peculiar talent for managing
the affairs of others, without any knowledge of the details, better
than the men themselves, who are giving their life's thought to the
vital questions. Intolerance is the voice of the Pharisee still crying
through the ages and proclaiming his infallibility.
Let us not seek to fit the whole world with shoes from our individual
last. If we think that all music ceased to be written when Wagner
laid down the pen, let us not condemn those who find enjoyment in
light opera. Perhaps they may sometime rise to our heights of artistic
appreciation and learn the proper parts to applaud. If their lighter
music satisfies their souls, is our Wagner doing more for us? It is
not fair to take from a child its rag doll in order to raise it to
the appreciation of the Venus de Milo. The rag doll is its Venus; it
may require a long series of increasingly better dolls to lead it to
realize the beauties of the marble woman of Melos.
Intolerance makes its great mistakes in measuring the needs of others
from its own standpoint. Intolerance ignores the personal equation in
life. What would be an excellent book for a man of forty might be worse
than useless for a boy of thirteen. The line of activity in life that
we would choose as our highest dream of bliss, as our Paradise, might,
if forced on another, be to him worse than the after-death fate of the
wicked, according to the old-fashioned theologians. What would be a
very acceptable breakfast for a sparrow would be a very poor meal for
an elephant.
When we sit in solemn judgment of the acts and characters of those
around us and condemn them with the easy nonchalance of our ignorance,
yet with the assumption of omniscience we reveal our intolerance.
Tolerance ever leads us to recognize and respect the differences in the
natures of those who are near to us, to make allowance for differences
in training, in opportunities, in ideals, in motives, in tastes, in
opinions, in temperaments and in feelings. Intolerance seeks to live
other people's lives _for_ them; sympathy helps us to live their lives
_with_ them. We must accept humanity with all its weakness, sin and
folly and seek to make the best of it, just as humanity must accept us.
We learn this lesson as we grow older, and, with the increase of our
knowledge of the world, we see how much happier life would have been
for us and for others if we had been more tolerant, more charitable,
more generous.
No one in the world is absolutely perfect; if he were he would probably
be translated from earth to heaven, as was Elijah of old, without
waiting for the sprouting of wings or the passport of death. It is a
hard lesson for youth to learn, but we must realize, as the old college
professor said to his class of students, bowed with the consciousness
of their wisdom: "No one of us is infallible, no, not even the
youngest." Let us accept the little failings of those around us as
we accept facts in nature, and make the best of them, as we accept
the hard shells of nuts, the skin of fruits, the shadow that always
accompanies light. These are not absolute faults, they are often but
individual peculiarities. Intolerance sees the mote in its neighbor's
eye as larger than the beam in its own.
Instead of concentrating our thought on the one weak spot in a
character, let us seek to find some good quality that offsets it, just
as a credit may more than cancel a debt on a ledger account. Let us
not constantly speak of roses having thorns, let us be thankful that
the thorns have roses. In Nature there are both thorns and prickles;
thorns are organic, they have their root deep in the fibre and the
being of the twig; prickles are superficial, they are lightly held in
the cuticle or covering of the twig. There are thorns in character that
reveal an internal inharmony, that can be controlled only from within;
there are also prickles, which are merely peculiarities of temperament,
that the eye of tolerance may overlook and the finger of charity can
gently remove.
The tenderness of tolerance will illuminate and glorify the world,—as
moonlight makes all things beautiful,—if we only permit it. Measuring
a man by his weakness alone is unjust. This little frailty may be but a
small mortgage on a large estate, and it is narrow and petty to judge
by the mortgage on a character. Let us consider the "equity," the
excess of the real value over the claim against it.
Unless we sympathetically seek to discover the motive behind the act,
to see the circumstances that inspired a course of living, the target
at which a man is aiming, our snap condemnations are but arrogant and
egotistic expressions of our intolerance. All things must be studied
relatively instead of absolutely. The hour hand on a clock does just as
valuable work as the minute hand, even though it is shorter and seems
to do only one-twelfth as much.
Intolerance in the home circle shows itself in overdiscipline, in
an atmosphere of severity heavy with prohibitions. The home becomes
a place strewn with "Please keep off the grass" signs. It means the
suppression of individuality, the breaking of the wills of children,
instead of their development and direction. It is the foolish attempt
to mould them from the outside, as a potter does clay; the higher
conception is the wise training that helps the child to help himself
in his own growth. Parents often forget their own youth; they do not
sympathize with their children in their need of pleasure, of dress,
of companionship. There should be a few absolutely firm rules on
essentials, the basic principles of living, with the largest possible
leeway for the varying manifestations of individuality in unimportant
phases. Confidence, sympathy, love and trust would generate a spirit
of tolerance and sweetness that would work marvels. Intolerance
converts live, natural children into prigs of counterfeit virtue and
irritatingly good automatons of obedience.
Tolerance is a state of mutual concessions. In the family life there
should be this constant reciprocity of independence, this mutual
forbearance. It is the instinctive recognition of the sacredness of
individuality, the right of each to live his own life as best he can.
When we set ourselves up as dictators to tyrannize over the thoughts,
words and acts of others, we are sacrificing the kingly power of
influence with which we may help others, for the petty triumph of
tyranny which repels and loses them.
Perhaps one reason why the sons of great and good men so often go
astray is that the earnestness, strength and virtue of the father,
exacting strict obedience to the letter of the law, kills the
appreciation of the spirit of it, breeding an intolerance that
forces submission under which the fire of protest and rebellion is
smouldering, ready to burst into flame at the first breath of freedom.
Between brother and sister, husband and wife, parent and child,
master and servant, the spirit of tolerance, of "making allowances,"
transforms a house of gloom and harshness into a home of sweetness and
love.
In the sacred relation of parent to child there always comes a time
when the boy becomes a man, when she whom the father still regards but
as a little girl faces the great problems of life as an individual.
The coming of years of discretion brings a day when the parents must
surrender their powers of trusteeship, when the individual enters upon
his heritage of freedom and responsibility. Parents have still the
right and privilege of counsel and of helpful, loving insight their
children should respect. But in meeting a great question, when the son
or daughter stands before a problem that means happiness or misery for
a lifetime, it must be for him or for her to decide. Coercion, bribery,
undue influence, threats of disinheritance, and the other familiar
weapons, are cruel, selfish, arrogant and unjust. A child is a human
being, free to make his own life, not a slave. There is a clearly
marked dead-line that it is intolerance to cross.
Let us realize that tolerance is ever broadening; it develops
sympathy, weakens worry and inspires calmness. It is but charity
and optimism, it is Christianity as a living eternal fact, not a
mere theory. Let us be tolerant of the weakness of others, sternly
intolerant of our own. Let us seek to forgive and forget the faults
of others, losing sight, to a degree, of what they are in the thought
of what they may become. Let us fill their souls with the inspiring
revelation of their possibilities in the majestic evolution march of
humanity. Let us see, for ourselves and for them, in the acorn of their
present the towering oak of their future.
We should realize the right of every human soul to work out its own
destiny, with our aid, our sympathy, our inspiration, if we are thus
privileged to help him to live his life; but it is intolerance to try
to live it for him. He sits alone on the throne of his individuality;
he must reign alone, and at the close of his rule must give his own
account to the God of the ages of the deeds of his kingship. Life is
a dignified privilege, a glorious prerogative of every man, and it
is arrogant intolerance that touches the sacred ark with the hand of
unkind condemnation.