The Companionship of Tolerance
The Companionship ofTolerance
Intoleranceis 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 truthas 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 thatthe 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 thelives, 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, justemerging 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? Theworld 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 broughtbefore 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 thatcontinue 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 appreciationof 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 nonchalanceof 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 livesforthem; sympathy helps us to live their liveswiththem. 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 wasElijah 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, letus 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 wisetraining 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 ourselvesup 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 boybecomes 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 everbroadening; 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 givehis 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.