TOLERANCE AND INDIFFERENTISM.
[To TRIG EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—Has not Mr. Lionel Tollemache in the interesting series of variations on "tout *comprendre, c'est tout par- dormer," contained in his letter in your last week's issue indi- cated the true solution of a question on which you touch in another part of the same issue,—the apology of intolerance ? If toleration is impossible without some degree of compre- hension, some recognition of the possible reasonableness of the position tolerated, and if, further, for at least ninety-nine men out of a hundred " comprendre c'est presque devenir complice," we are obliged to admit that such men cannot tolerate without thereby suffering moral injury. Their strong moral sentiments deprived of their natural issue in action become confused and weakened, and tend to atrophy; they must either "persecute" or deteriorate in the same way as do savages when brought into relation with a civilisation whose application of the canons of right and wrong is markedly different from their own. The range of beliefs and practices that the members of a society can tolerate without suffering moral injury will, of course, vary immensely from age to age and from nation to nation. Whether toleration is always worth the price of indifferentism, to which it stands related both as cause and as effect ; whether we, who are tolerant mainly because we only half-believe, have any right to assume airs of moral superiority over the men of the " dark " ages, whose vices we think ourselves leaving when, in truth, it is their virtues, their simplicity, and directness that are leaving 113, will not attempt to decide.—I am, Sir, &c.,
2 St. Dunstan's Road, West Kensington. GERALD GATOR.
Previous page
