speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls of their system blend to their eye in the remote horizon within the walls of the universe. . . They cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to see,. . . . how you can see! "[1]
Perhaps the best analogy to the attitude of the persecutor is the spontaneous yet blind abhorrence felt for acts and opinions which are probably connected with a certain amount of mental aberration, e.g. anarchism or sexual abnormality.
Such an attitude, however, has been still more characteristic of many heretics, in so far as they have hopelessly exaggerated a side issue at the expense of the whole; nor have they usually advocated toleration for others—especially when they were themselves in power.
But, just as the persecuting spirit may be largely bound up with an absence of very definitely formulated convictions, so, in the same way, it would be obviously absurd to classify all advocates of toleration as sceptics; for this would involve putting men like Socrates, Milton and Diderot into the same category as Pyrrho, Hobbes and Montaigne. The latter class of men are, on the whole, indifferent to abstract truth, and therefore not inclined to quarrel about it, whereas the former class are enthusiastic enough to welcome disputation in all its forms, and 1 Essays (Eversley edition), Macmillan, 1899, pp. 64, 65.
- ↑ Essays (Eversley edition), Macmillan, 1899, pp. 64, 65.
