THE PHILOSOPHIC TEMPER 



false, but he will gladly spend a night beside the 

 bed of the thinker. This is toleration, and whoso 

 knows the power of association of ideas will rec- 

 ognize that it is much easier to define than to 

 display. "The lying mouth shall be stopped," 

 and we are very ready to stop it with right good 

 will. But, easy or difficult to realize, this is the 

 true meaning of tolerance; which may coexist 

 at least in theory with a burning faith and a 

 consuming zeal. 



Now if we accept the argument that intolerance 

 proceeds not from cruelty but from intellectual 

 incapacity to distinguish between closely associ- 

 ated ideas the sin and the sinner we may con- 

 clude that toleration is an intellectual rather than 

 a moral product. Calvin, the Inquisitors, the 

 burners of Bruno, were doubtless kind to their 

 relations. They were not emotionally deficient, 

 but intellectually. They were fools rather than 

 knaves. Now in Herbert Spencer the intellect 

 was supreme, though the emotional nature was 

 highly developed under the cold and ungenial 

 surface. As the Reverend Professor Iverach ob- 

 serves, in his generous and scholarly study, Spencer 

 certainly believed that the unknowable revealed 

 certain truths through him. To use the noble old 

 phrase, he knew himself to be a "Prophet of the 

 Most High." And he had the prophet's persistence 

 and courage and directness and conviction. But 

 fortunately he had a somewhat rare possession of 

 the prophet a disciplined intellect. And hence 

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