xv INFALLIBILITY AND TOLERATION 277 



to every man s sight and point of view. Hence an 

 indefinite variety of truths may be valid relatively to a 

 variety of differently constituted and situated persons. 

 Toleration mounts the throne left vacant by Infallibility. 



But what a blasphemous travesty of Truth, what a 

 hideous anarchy it must all seem to absolutists, dogmatists, 

 pedants, authoritarians of all sorts ! How it must seem 

 to them to shiver into atoms the whole edifice of Truth 

 and the foundations of all intellectual order ! No wonder 

 they must support Rome against the inroads of such 

 modernity ! No wonder they are almost speechless with 

 horror and incoherent with indignation ! For the mirage 

 of an absolute Truth in the skies is dissolved beyond 

 recall, and its worshippers are left desolate. To them it 

 seemed the real thing. It never was the real thing, and 

 they have lost nothing but an illusion. But they do not, 

 and perhaps will not, see this. All that was of real value 

 remains. The terrestrial realities remain of which the 

 celestial phantasmagoria was the reflection. There 

 remains the practical necessity of living together and 

 agreeing upon the conditions of a common life. Man 

 remains with his gregarious nature, his lack of originality, 

 his respect for tradition, his easy acquiescence in the 

 habitual, his dislike of innovation, his preference for order 

 and system, his eagerness to think the world a cosmos 

 in short, with all the forces that weld society together. 



More than enough remains, therefore, for the compact 

 ing of our intellectual order. The real and objective 

 becomes that which it is socially convenient to recognize, 

 in a rich variety of senses. Objective truth will be that 

 which all or most can agree on, and fits in best with the 

 course of their experience. It articulates itself into 

 systems of truths which are more substantial, more useful, 

 and probably more durable, than the transcendent vision 

 which was sacrificed. Certainly these systems are at 

 present plural, not because Truth cannot be conceived as 

 one for the plural truths can easily be conceived as con 

 verging towards a single consummation but because men 

 do not, in fact, agree. Whether they can agree remains 



