CHAPTER III.INTOLERANCE

Tolerance is the characteristic virtue of the modern era, just as intolerance has been typical of every age and almost every people in days gone by. Tolerance, we feel is the golden key which alone can open the door to the golden age. Tolerance is the one thing that can possibly wipe out the evils of hatred, warfare, and confusion, the age-old enemies of the progress of the race. When men and women learn tolerance for each other’s race, nationality, religion, and general attitudes, then they will be able to understand one another, and eventually to work with one another, even to love one another. Without that tolerance, we can never understand people of different race or religion or nationality, because we never even stop to look at them fairly and honestly. Certainly, without tolerance, co-operation, human sympathy, the brotherhood of man are empty words without possibility of realization.

But that only pushes the problem back a step. What is this tolerance, and how can it be attained? It is easy for us to be tolerant on matters we do not care about, but hard on matters that are deep in our hearts. Religious tolerance is growing because religious intensity of the old type is weakening. Religious wars, as practised in Europe three hundred years ago, will never be repeated because Christians are no longer certain that their fellow-Christians of different sects are going to burn in everlasting flames. Thomas Jefferson was tolerant on religion because he was fairly indifferent to the whole subject; his intolerance was reserved for political opponents, and for the aristocratic party in other lands as well. The rarest object in the whole museum of history is the man who has profound convictions of his own, and yet is tolerant of those who differ from him—a Roger Williams, for example, who was a pious clergyman but allowed liberty of conscience in his settlement of RhodeIsland even to Catholics and Jews. Such a man is a symbol of what the whole world may become in the messianic age, a type of our strictly modern ideal.

The study of intolerance takes us at once out of the field of individual psychology into the newer and less cultivated field of social psychology, the mind of the group. For intolerance is characteristically an attribute of groups. Intolerance is the white against the black; the Christian against the Jew, the Frenchman against the German—always one group lined up against another. Intolerance nestles in the individual mind simply because every individual of us is a member of a nation, a religion, a race, and has the typical prejudices of his own people. I may think myself better than you, but that is merely egotism. If I think my family better than your family and refuse to associate with you, that becomes intolerance. And if I join an organization of people with similar opinions to my own, and we decide to keep you and all your kind from doing business or holding public office or otherwise prospering and succeeding in a country which we both inhabit, then intolerance has attained its growth and come to flower. Always one body of people against another, animated by prejudice, and the reasons do not matter. For prejudice, literally, means prejudgment, opinion before the facts come in, and the facts are then selected to give us reasons for our attitude.

First of all, we must realize that intolerance is the typical and natural human attitude. From the beginning of history it was so deeply intrenched in every race and tribe that it seems to have begun with the life of the race, and has its roots perhaps in the pre-human life, among those wolves or bees that drive a stranger out of the pack or hive and leave him to die alone. For that happened times without number in the early human packs of human hives. Every group of people knows that it is the one proper, human group, and that all others are imitations and second-rate. The foreign language always is gibberish to us, not because it is inferior, but simply because we do not understand it. The uneducated man always looks on a foreigneras somehow an imbecile, because he cannot understand a simple, natural tongue like English! The ancient Greeks spoke of such old, magnificent civilizations as those of Egypt and Persia as barbarians, even though Greece was their pupil in every art from war to letters. The Mohammedan calls others unbelievers, even though they may be fire-worshippers, or Buddhists, or Christians; these people are not unbelievers, but merely different-believers. And the Christian calls the Mohammedan, in turn, infidel, which means the same thing. In the Merchant of Venice, the Jew is referred to as a pagan, which is exactly the thing which the Jew is not historically, for Christianity represents a combination of Jewish and pagan elements. No matter—everyone thinks that his people are right and other peoples wrong. “My country, right or wrong,” represents a concession to modernism, blatant as it is. The universal feeling has always been, up to the threshold of our own age, “My own country, or tribe, or people, is always right.”

Intolerance, then, is not based on reasons, whether good or bad. It grows out of the nature of groups of people. It means merely that the other fellow is different, not at all that he is wrong. Everett Dean Martin points out in his studies of the crowd that the crowd is always dogmatic and egocentric. Every nation has some crowd characteristics, is interested in its own welfare, not in that of its colonies, or its competitors, or the human race. Patriotism is as dogmatic as is religion. Every state, every city has its local loyalty, which magnifies its advantages and conceals its disadvantages, and especially cries down its rival state or city. Even the scientist, the student of social conditions, is apt to speak of higher and lower cultures, or higher and lower races—meaning always that his culture is higher and the Chinese lower, or the Anglo-Saxon is higher and the Italian lower. At that point the scientist seems to be animated by a very unscientific intolerance. When a student of society points out ways in which the Chinese culture is worthy of our imitation, then I will feel that he is truly scientific and not at all prejudiced. For who says that our occidental culture is superior to the Chinese? We say so. Who says the Chinese is superior? The Chinese do, of course. But they are prejudiced?Certainly, and so are we! The most that can be said with certainty is that the two cultures are different, and these differences can then be studied in detail.

Prejudice is often racial because people of different appearances stand out clearly as very different from us indeed. But they need not be inferior. The current prejudice against the Negro says that he is lazy, unintelligent, immoral—but the same intolerance operates against the many members of the colored race who are more diligent, more intelligent, and quite as moral as the average white. In all these characteristics the races overlap; the most that can be said statistically is that the whites have the larger percentage of the higher intellectual persons. Unfortunately, much of that may be due to training rather than to heredity, for in the army tests the northern negroes actually averaged higher than the southern whites. But even if this intolerance toward the black race were justified by facts after we whites entertained it on natural instinctive grounds, why then should we give directly opposite reasons for our dislike of the Japanese? For the Japanese is called by his very enemies shrewd, industrious and saving. If the lazy negro is our inferior, then the hustling Japanese should be our superior. The fact is that neither race is inferior in a way that can be proved—but both are different, and every group is naturally intolerant of the group that is different from itself.

But weighty reasons of racial character are quite unnecessary in establishing prejudice. Probably no two peoples in Europe are more closely related in race than the Germans and the English. A hundred years ago or more they were closest allies against Napoleon; during the World War, when political and economic conditions ranged them on opposite sides, each tried to show that it was a superior race, with no connection at all with the other, so far beneath it. Religious prejudice may be based on genuine differences, as between Jew and Christian, or on comparatively trivial matters as between Methodists and Baptists. The shifting nature of these prejudices and their purely personal application appears distinctly in the latest slogan of intolerance—“White, Protestant, Gentile, American.” All others, not conforming to this criterion, cannot be one hundredper centers. This excludes the Negro, as well as the Indian, who is certainly American but is not white. It eliminates the Jew, who is not a gentile; and the Catholic who is not a Protestant. And it excludes a white Protestant gentile of English or German birth, who may be everything else but is not American-born. Obviously, there is no logic in this, for classes are excluded for exactly opposite reasons. There is nothing in it except the one fact which always animates every kind of intolerance—the fact of difference.

Walter Lippman in his “Public Opinion” presents a point which no discussion of prejudice can ignore—55“that the way we see things is a combination of what is there and of what we expected to find.” He works out the process of the “mental stereotype,” by which we have a preconception of the labor agitator, the alien, the Harvard man, and see the individual always in the light of the group to which we may attribute him.56“One factor, the insertion between man and his environment of a pseudo-environment. To that pseudo-environment his behavior is a response.”57“The pictures inside people’s heads do not automatically correspond with the world outside.”

58On some natures, stimuli from the outside, especially when they are printed or spoken words, evoke some part of a system of stereotypes, so that the actual sensation and the preconception occupy consciousness at the same time. The two are blended, much as if we looked at red through blue glasses and saw green.... If the experience contradicts the stereotype, one of two things happens. If the man is no longer plastic, or if some powerful interest makes it highly inconvenient to rearrange his stereotypes, he pooh-poohs the contradiction as an exception that proves the rule, discredits the witness, finds a flaw somewhere, and manages to forget it. But if he still is curious and openminded, the novelty is taken into the picture and allowed to modify it.

Thus acquaintance of one group with another is not enough in itself to break down prejudice, for the white man may see the Negro, or the Christian the Jew, not as the other really is but as he thinks the other group ought to be. Only escape from group thinking, the use of the individual intelligence about anindividual, can possibly make any difference in our pre-conceived notions of other peoples.

Moreover it is true, as Professor Shailer of Harvard pointed out long ago in his book, “The Neighbor,” that this fact of difference operates most strongly when the two different groups come into contact with each other. Prejudice is always strongest on the frontier. The Nebraskan does not have the active prejudice against Mexico that animates the Texan, nor against Japan that we find in California, nor against the Negro as in the solid south. Not that Nebraska is a land favored peculiarly by justice, but that it has no direct contact with large numbers of these different races. Naturally, this contact often opens the way to real acquaintance, before which intolerance grows faint and may even vanish. American soldiers in the occupied districts of Germany brought enough German brides to show how quickly prejudice breaks down on personal acquaintance. Christian scholars of the time of Humanism learned Hebrew from Jews whom their medieval predecessors would have avoided as the plague, and a new respect for Judaism began to spread. But as long as the contact of the two peoples is a frontier contact only, a group contact, of class with class, directed by their different status in the world, such contact merely ministers to the intolerance which individual knowledge and friendship would break down.

A striking instance of this group nature of intolerance occurred within my own observation on the Western front during the World War. In an attack one of our prisoners was a German lad of eighteen, a harmless peasant boy who had deserted his machine gun and come in willingly as a prisoner; we made him useful about the first aid post, and he carried water, swept out the place, and even wrapped up German helmets to send to America as souvenirs. But Hans had been a machine gunner; if our soldiers had found him at his post they might have shot him on sight. If they had found him with other troops, they would have disarmed him, driven him back to the prison camp. In the first case, he would have belonged to the group of machine gunners, the greatest danger to the American advance. In the second, he would have belonged to the groupof German soldiers, and been fair prey for enmity and capture. As it was, he was regarded merely as Hans—and the hated German machine gunner acted as servant to the friendly American bosses.

If these general principles of intolerance are true, we can apply them at once to the peculiar situation of the Jew—everywhere at home, yet everywhere the creature of prejudice; not so very different from the other white nations among whom he lives, yet always distinct from them and always the target of intolerance. Every movement of bigotry, aristocracy, militarism, junkerism in every land makes anti-semitism one of its cardinal shouting-cries, from the emigrés of Russia to the royalist anti-Dreyfusards of France. The Jew is hated everywhere simply because he lives everywhere, and is everywhere a little different from other people. The Jew has a distinct religion, a peculiar tradition and appearance which can sometimes be distinguished—he is different from other people. And the extreme bitterness of this anti-Semitism, more than of any other anti-party the world over, is simply because everywhere the Jew lives on a frontier, in direct group contact with the intolerant of other peoples. Every Jew lives on a Franco-German frontier, or a Mexican-American one. Even in the United States of America, with its proud tradition of tolerance written into the Federal Constitution, there is now a movement of anti-Semitism. The most obvious condition of its rise is the increase of the Jewish community of America, that is, the extension of the frontier line, the contact of more Americans with this “alien,” which means different, people. Add to that the hatred of certain foreign groups aroused during the war, the suspicion of certain radical groups directly after it, the general unsettled condition of world opinion, and the vast increase of European anti-Semitism as the parties of reaction were thrown on the defensive—and the exact form of American anti-Semitism begins to show itself.

But all these local details do not obscure the real nature of this prejudice which we face in America today. It is just another form of the intolerance of everything different which the wandering exiles have had to face during their two thousandyears of homeless persecution. Of course, all this has had its effect on the Jew. It has driven the Jew into intolerance in his turn. His intolerance has never expressed itself in terms of persecution or violence, very seldom in terms of hatred. The intolerance of the Jew became, in self-defense, a pride in the Chosen People of God, in his ancient lineage, in his family loyalty, in his glorious tradition. He then emphasized the fact of difference from other peoples, just as they did, and the Jew looked down on the rude, ignorant heathens just as the Christian despised the uncouth alien Jew. Intolerance has one virtue—it makes for loyalty to your own. It has many vices, beginning with false and ignorant pride, culminating in bitter, malignant hatred.

If intolerance is this natural, universal force, what then is tolerance? How can tolerance ever hope to succeed in a world divided into so many hostile and suspicious groups? Tolerance means the exercise of the individual intelligence. It means that a man has dared to look at the facts and to say: “My people is wrong. This foreigner is just as good as I am.” Or this Jew, or Catholic, or negro, as the case may be. It means that a man has the courage to defy the public opinion of his own group, and to use his own brains instead of going along with the crowd. It means that general principles of right and wrong, applicable universally, have begun to replace the old tribal morality, of sticking by your own through thick and thin. It represents the growth of free inquiry, of science, of the unbiased use of the human intellect, the broadening of the human sympathies. It represents also the breaking down of group control, that instant and unthinking emotional response of the crowd to that which is congenial or against that which is different. Tolerance is the typical virtue of the modern world because the modern world is becoming increasingly self-conscious, intelligent and individualistic, and especially because the modern world is beginning to afford opportunities for real acquaintance between members of different peoples, not merely the superficial frontier contacts which make for prejudice. Above all, tolerance marks thegrowth of the larger, more inclusive group which includes the smaller ones, and outlaws intolerance between them. In the American army during the World War intolerance was at its lowest, simply because all the various elements in our people were acutely conscious of their common country. Old-time prejudices, left over from the Civil War, were forgotten. Religious and racial intolerance were minimized because there was a common purpose, and a common intolerance of a common enemy.

The coming of tolerance between any two groups, then, means that these two have been included, in the minds of their own members, as parts of a larger, more inclusive body to which they both owe loyalty. Such a tolerance between the nations of the world, now so ready to make war at the slightest provocation, would imply an international or a supernational loyalty, a genuine brotherhood of man, and a real fatherhood of God. Tolerance means that intelligence has made inroads into the old habit of following the group custom blindly through thick and thin. It means that sympathy has succeeded hatred, that suspicion has given way to brotherhood and love. Tolerance is the supreme challenge to the authority of the group to master the thinking man. Treachery to one’s own nation or faith is no such challenge, for that simply means that the traitor preferred another rule and another standard to the one in which he was born. But tolerance is the challenge; it serves notice that no absolute authority, no ancient usage of hatred or bigotry, no instinct to fear the stranger, can forever dominate.

There is a fine summary of this whole question in “The Group Mind” by Professor William MacDougall of Harvard. Dr. MacDougall says of the modern world:59

Instead of maintaining universal intolerance, we have made great strides toward universal tolerance.... The religious tolerance and liberty of the modern era are features of the general increase of tolerance and liberty, and must be ascribed to the same causes as this wider fact. For long ages men have felt sympathy and given considerate and just treatment to those who have been nearest to them; at first, to the members of their own immediate family; later to the fellow-members of their own small society; and then, as societies expanded into complex caste societies, to the membersof their own caste; later, as castes were broken down, to all their fellow citizens; and later still in some degree to all men.

And he concludes the examination of the subject by saying:

The coming of religious toleration was due to the application of the spirit of inquiry to religious systems; these inquiries produced irreconcilable sects, whose strife prepared the way for compromise and toleration.

One more question arises naturally in our minds before we can accept this analysis and use it as part of our daily thinking and acting; what is the effect of such toleration on our own loyalty to our own people? Does the philanthropist neglect his family, or the man without strong religious hatreds prove careless of his religion, or the lover of mankind prove a poor patriot? This is the usual opinion, and therefore a very effective argument against the position which I have here tried to establish. But this opinion is directly contrary to the facts of the case. Does family affection make for or against love of country? Naturally, the former, for loyal children are also loyal citizens. Should the man who would love his country on that account hate his city or his state? Of course not; love of his native land begins with the smaller unit, which he knows best, and then grows to the entire nation, which includes it. And in the same way loyalty to the cause of humanity need not mean, cannot mean disloyalty to the cause of the nation, which is so great and important a part of the human race. But, on the other hand, the patriotic American does not hate Illinois because he has moved to Indiana. Love of one’s own state persists without the hatred and intolerance of the other state, just because the two are members of the American nation, and the inclusive loyalty makes the other loyalties less bitter and less contentious against each other. Why, in the Balkans, states much smaller than Indiana and Illinois have their armies always ready for a cause of complaint against the other. That is because they have as yet no common loyalty. It is because the free intelligence has not yet broken through the inborn suspicion and intolerance of the human pack. Probably we can never expect all human beings actually and actively to love one another.That seems illusory in light of the history of human nature. But there is every prospect that tolerance will spread as world intelligence becomes more enlightened, and as more people in each generation share in that world intelligence. And this spread of tolerance will make always for larger and more ideal loyalties, including the warring nations and hating sects of today, even as nowadays the city includes the family or the nation includes the state. Hatred toward the Jew takes its place today in the hierarchy of hatreds as one of the strongest and most widespread of all. Therefore it will probably be one of the last to go as tolerance overcomes intolerance the world over. But every step toward the discovery of new truths or toward the dissemination of the truths already known is another step toward the destruction of all prejudice and toward the real liberation of the Jew. Naturally, the Jew himself will overcome his prejudices at the same time, as he has shown himself pathetically eager to do at several times of false security in the past.

The great hopeful fact of it all is this: tolerance begets tolerance. That hatred causes hatred is well known, for it is the normal course of every personal conflict or national war. Each unfriendly act of one side is followed by one of the other, until nations enter warfare all ready to hate one another, and leave it hating more than ever. But friendship, fairness, tolerance, have the same way of spreading by their own inner force. If America discriminates against Japanese immigrants, the Japanese think of ways to show their dislike of America. But if America gives back the Boxer indemnity to China, the Chinese send their students to America, then these return to their native land with an attitude of friendliness, and the process of tolerance and peace, once begun, grows by its own power. Lines of tolerance radiate from every true center of justice, of inquiry, of religion. Human growth is slow, but we can mark its methods and take part in its tremendous process.

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