Intellectual Futility of Force 207 



disintegrated their motives.' The disappearance 

 of the religious wars was not so remarkable, how- 

 ever, as the disappearance of the motives for 

 these wars, the fact that men lost all desire to 

 impose their intellectual convictions by physical 

 force upon others. The story of this change in 

 ideas is one of surpassing interest in the history of 

 human evolution. From the time when the first 

 heretics questioned the dogmas almost universally 

 held in the Roman Catholic Church, through the 

 discussions and the debates of Castellio, Socinus, 

 Zwingli, and the other leaders who compelled 

 Calvin and the Geneva theologians to defend 

 their position by arguments instead of by cannons 

 and thus removed the struggle to the realm of 

 intellect, to the victory of rationalism over per- 

 secution and force as a means of establishing 

 truth, the story of the rise of tolerance consti- 

 tutes one of the most dramatic illustrations in his- 

 tory of the futility of physical force in the realm 

 of intellectual struggle, and of the abandonment 



' See W. E. H. Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spir- 

 it of Rationalism in Europe, New York, 1 871, especially chapter v.: 



"The Peace of Westphalia is justly regarded as closing the era 

 of religious wars. . . . Among all the possible dangers which 

 cloud the horizon, none appears more improbable than a coalition 

 formed upon the principle of a common belief, and designed to 

 extend the sphere of its influence. . . . Wars that were once 

 regarded as simple duties became absolutely impossible. . . . 

 That which had long been the centre around which all other 

 interests revolved, receded and disappeared, and a profound 

 change in the actions of mankind indicated a profound change 

 in their belief." — Vol. ii., pp. iio-ii. 



