XV 

 INFALLIBILITY AND TOLERATION 1 



ARGUMENT 



The claim to infallibility is logically involved in the belief in absolute truth, 

 and is held by the Pope in a less extreme form than by the philosopher. 

 It legitimates intolerance and leads to persecution and social discord. 

 Common sense evades its practical absurdities by assuming that no 

 human truth is ever absolute. But this leads to scepticism. 



It is better, therefore, to drop the absolutist assumption altogether, and 

 to humanize truth, making it mean the best view devised up to date. This 

 legitimates and promotes toleration and social harmony. But it shocks 

 all dogmatists. And so the Roman Church will probably suppress 

 Modernism, and refuse to give up its dogma-enacting powers, baleful as 

 they have proved even to itself. 



A DETACHED spectator of the follies of mankind could 

 not but be profoundly impressed by the widespread 

 interest which has been aroused throughout the world by 

 the Pope s Encyclical against what is called Modernism. 

 In many quarters the Papal condemnation is regarded as 

 a sort of Congo atrocity in the spiritual world. But no 

 reason is given why Protestants and Agnostics, Jews and 

 Infidels, should interfere, even in thought, with the way 

 in which internal discipline is administered in a Church 

 which has always proclaimed its resolution to prescribe 

 with authority and to enforce unquestioning obedience. 

 Why should sympathy be lavished on persons who are 

 oppressed because they refuse to liberate themselves by 

 leaving an institution which excommunicates them ? In 

 these days when no Church is strong enough to persecute 

 effectively, and it has become quite an arguable position 

 that the best way of furthering the spiritual development 



1 This paper appeared in the Hibbert Journal for October 1908. For further 

 light on the genesis of intolerance cp. my Formal Logic, ch. xxv. 



268 



