CHAPTER XXXTHE LAST HUNDRED YEARS
Twelve years ago it would have been quite easy to write this book. The word “Intolerance,” in the minds of most people, was then almost exclusively identified with the idea of “religious intolerance” and when an historian wrote that “so and so had been a champion of tolerance” it was generally accepted that so and so had spent his life fighting the abuses of the Church and the tyranny of a professional priesthood.
Then came the war.
And much was changed in this world.
Instead of one system of intolerance, we got a dozen.
Instead of one form of cruelty, practiced by man upon his fellow-men, we got a hundred.
And a society which was just beginning to rid itself of the horrors of religious bigotry was obliged to put up with the infinitely more painful manifestations of a paltry form of racial intolerance and social intolerance and a score of petty forms of intolerance, the existence of which had not even been suspected a decade ago.
This seems very terrible to many good people who until recently lived in the happy delusion that progress was a sort of automatic time-piece which needed no other winding than their occasional approbation.
They sadly shake their heads, whisper “Vanity, vanity,all is vanity!” and mutter disagreeable things about the cussedness of the human race which goes everlastingly to school, yet always refuses to learn.
Until, in sheer despair, they join the rapidly increasing ranks of our spiritual defeatists, attach themselves to this or that or the other religious institution (that they may transfer their own burden to the back of some one else), and in the most doleful tones acknowledge themselves beaten and retire from all further participation in the affairs of their community.
I don’t like such people.
They are not merely cowards.
They are traitors to the future of the human race.
So far so good, but what is the solution, if a solution there be?
Let us be honest with ourselves.
There is not any.
At least not in the eyes of a world which asks for quick results and expects to settle all difficulties of this earth comfortably and speedily with the help of a mathematical or medical formula or by an act of Congress. But those of us who have accustomed ourselves to consider history in the light of eternity and who know that civilization does not begin and end with the twentieth century, feel a little more hopeful.
That vicious circle of despair of which we hear so much nowadays (“man has always been that way,” “man always will be that way,” “the world never changes,” “things are just about the same as they were four thousand years ago,”) does not exist.
It is an optical illusion.
The line of progress is often interrupted but if we set aside all sentimental prejudices and render a sober judgment upon the record of the last twenty thousand years (the only period about which we possess more or less concrete information) we notice an indubitable if slow rise from a condition of almost unspeakable brutality and crudeness to a state which holds the promise of something infinitely nobler and better than what has ever gone before and even the ghastly blunder of the Great War can not shake the firm conviction that this is true.
The human race is possessed of almost incredible vitality.
It has survived theology.
It due time it will survive industrialism.
It has lived through cholera and plague, high heels and blue laws.
It will also learn how to overcome the many spiritual ills which beset the present generation.
History, chary of revealing her secrets, has thus far taught us one great lesson.
What the hand of man has done, the hand of man can also undo.
It is a question of courage, and next to courage, of education.
That of course sounds like a platitude. For the last hundred years we have had “education” driven into our ears until we are sick and tired of the word and look longingly back to a time when people could neither read nor writebut used their surplus intellectual energy for occasional moments of independent thinking.
But when I here speak of “education” I do not mean the mere accumulation of facts which is regarded as the necessary mental ballast of our modern children. Rather, I have in mind that true understanding of the present which is born out of a charitable and generous knowledge of the past.
In this book I have tried to prove that intolerance is merely a manifestation of the protective instinct of the herd.
A group of wolves is intolerant of the wolf that is different (be it through weakness or strength) from the rest of the pack and invariably tries to get rid of this offending and unwelcome companion.
A tribe of cannibals is intolerant of the individual who by his idiosyncrasies threatens to provoke the wrath of the Gods and bring disaster upon the whole village and brutally relegates him or her to the wilderness.
The Greek commonwealth can ill afford to harbor within its sacred walls a citizen who dares to question the very fundaments upon which the success of the community has been built and in a poor outburst of intolerance condemns the offending philosopher to the merciful death of poison.
The Roman state cannot possibly hope to survive if a small group of well-meaning zealots is allowed to play fast and loose with certain laws which have been held indispensable ever since the days of Romulus, and much against her own will she is driven into deeds of intolerance which are entirely at variance with her age-old policy of liberal aloofness.
The Church, spiritual heir to the material dominions of the ancient Empire, depends for her continued existence upon the absolute and unquestioning obedience of even thehumblest of her subjects and is driven to such extremes of suppression and cruelty that many people prefer the ruthlessness of the Turk to the charity of the Christian.
The great insurgents against ecclesiastical tyranny, beset by a thousand difficulties, can only maintain their rule if they show themselves intolerant to all spiritual innovations and scientific experiments and in the name of “Reform” they commit (or rather try to commit) the self-same mistakes which have just deprived their enemies of most of their former power and influence.
And so it goes throughout the ages until life, which might be a glorious adventure, is turned into a horrible experience and all this happens because human existence so far has been entirely dominated by fear.
For fear, I repeat it, is at the bottom of all intolerance.
No matter what form or shape a persecution may take, it is caused by fear and its very vehemence is indicative of the degree of anguish experienced by those who erect the gallows or throw fresh logs upon the funeral pyre.
Once we recognize this fact, the solution of the difficulty immediately presents itself.
Man, when not under the influence of fear, is strongly inclined to be righteous and just.
Thus far he has had very few opportunities to practice these two virtues.
But I cannot for the life of me see that this matters overmuch. It is part of the necessary development of the human race. And that race is young, hopelessly, almost ridiculously young. To ask that a certain form of mammal,which began its independent career only a few thousand years ago should already have acquired those virtues which go only with age and experience, seems both unreasonable and unfair.
And furthermore, it warps our point of view.
It causes us to be irritated when we should be patient.
It makes us say harsh things where we should only feel pity.
In the last chapters of a book like this, there is a serious temptation to assume the rôle of the prophet of woe and indulge in a little amateur preaching.
Heaven forbid!
Life is short and sermons are apt to be long.
And what cannot be said in a hundred words had better never be said at all.
Our historians are guilty of one great error. They speak of prehistoric times, they tell us about the Golden Age of Greece and Rome, they talk nonsense about a supposedly dark period, they compose rhapsodies upon the tenfold glories of our modern era.
If perchance these learned doctors perceive certain characteristics which do not seem to fit into the picture they have so prettily put together, they offer a few humble apologies and mumble something about certain undesirable qualities which are part of our unfortunate and barbaric heritage but which in due course of time will disappear, just as the stage-coach has given way before the railroad engine.
It is all very pretty but it is not true. It may flatter our pride to believe ourselves heir to the ages. It will bebetter for our spiritual health if we know ourselves for what we are—contemporaries of the folks that lived in caves, neolithic men with cigarettes and Ford cars, cliff-dwellers who reach their homes in an elevator.
For then and only then shall we be able to make a first step toward that goal that still lies hidden beyond the vast mountain ranges of the future.
To speak of Golden Ages and Modern Eras and Progress is sheer waste of time as long as this world is dominated by fear.
To ask for tolerance, as long as intolerance must of need be an integral part of our law of self-preservation, is little short of a crime.
The day will come when tolerance shall be the rule, when intolerance shall be a myth like the slaughter of innocent captives, the burning of widows, the blind worship of a printed page.
It may take ten thousand years, it may take a hundred thousand.
But it will come, and it will follow close upon the first true victory of which history shall have any record, the triumph of man over his own fear.
Westport, ConnecticutJuly, 19, 1925