THE CAUSES OF PERSECUTION 



of those deeds of persecution which have made 

 history hideous. To remove the heretic, lest 

 God curse us all for his sake, this no doubt 

 has been the feeling that, more than any other, 

 has justified the use of racks and thumb-screws. 

 But with the progress of society toward wider 

 ind wider political aggregation, and toward 

 greater and greater political stability, along 

 with the growing complexity of industrial pro- 

 cesses, and along with the partial elimination 

 of warfare, there has slowly grown up a feel- 

 ing that it is the individual, and not the tribe 

 or the society, that is ultimately responsible for 

 the individual's opinions on matters of religion. 

 Whatever we may think to-day about the results 

 or the method of Mr. Robert Ingersoll, we cer- 

 tainly do not entertain the dread that because 

 of Mr. Ingersoll's crude opinions, or his in- 

 trusive manner of expressing them, we are in 

 danger of a famine, a plague, or a civil war next 

 year. The aggregation of small communities 

 into great nations, and the growing complexity 

 of the industrial processes by which great na- 

 tions are sustained, have entirely obliterated in 

 our minds the recollection of the kinds of belief 

 and the kinds of moral obligation which charac- 

 terized the primitive tribal communities. The 

 phase of feeling characteristic of the primitive 

 community showed itself all through the Middle 

 Ages. In the following paper I shall show how 

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