TRUE LESSON OF PROTESTANTISM 



of dissent must be punished with torture and 

 death. I have elsewhere sought to account, on 

 historical grounds, for the existence of this 

 persecuting spirit, as well as for its decline in 

 modern times. In a paper on " The Causes of 

 Persecution," I showed how ancient society was 

 pervaded by an intense feeling of corporate re- 

 sponsibility, a feeling that the whole com- 

 munity was liable to be punished by the gods 

 for the misdeeds of any one of its individual 

 members. In early times this feeling of corpo- 

 rate responsibility, taken in connection with the 

 barbaric theories of the universe then current, 

 was the mainstay and support of priesthoods. 

 And it was to the persistence of this feeling 

 down through the Middle Ages that the hor- 

 rors of religious persecution were chiefly due. 

 In a second paper, on " The Origins of Pro- 

 testantism," I showed that the feeling of cor- 

 porate responsibility had its legitimate origin in 

 the military necessities of primitive societies. 

 In ages when there were no political aggrega- 

 tions of men larger than tribes, and when the 

 relations between tribes were chiefly those of 

 chronic warfare, a rude and savage discipline, 

 in which the legal existence of the individual 

 was virtually submerged in the interests of the 

 tribe, was absolutely necessary. The feeling that 

 the whole tribe was liable to be visited with de- 

 feat or famine or pestilence, on account of sac- 

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