These facts, glaring as they are, are disguised by the
promotion of immoralities into moralities which is constantly
going on. Christianity and Mohammedanism, once thought of and
dealt with exactly as Anarchism is thought of and dealt with
today, have become established religions; and fresh immoralities
are prosecuted in their name. The truth is that the vast majority
of persons professing these religions have never been anything
but simple moralists. The respectable Englishman who is a
Christian because he was born in Clapham would be a Mohammedan
for the cognate reason if he had been born in Constantinople. He
has never willingly tolerated immorality. He did not adopt any
innovation until it had become moral; and then he adopted it, not
on its merits, but solely because it had become moral. In doing
so he never realized that it had ever been immoral: consequently
its early struggles taught him no lesson; and he has opposed the
next step in human progress as indignantly as if neither manners,
customs, nor thought had ever changed since the beginning of the
world. Toleration must be imposed on him as a mystic and painful
duty by his spiritual and political leaders, or he will condemn
the world to stagnation, which is the penalty of an inflexible
morality.
WHAT TOLERATION MEANS
This must be done all the more arbitrarily because it is not
possible to make the ordinary moral man understand what
toleration and liberty really mean.
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