Tolerance. Tolerance is, in general, the virtue of every weak being destined to live with beings who are similar. Humans have remarkable intelligence, and yet are at the same time so limited by their errors and passions, that one could hardly too much inspire them to grant others the tolerance and support of which they have great need themselves, and without which the world would know only strife and discord. In fact, it is because these gentle and conciliating virtues have been outlawed that many centuries have witnessed such suffering and sorrow for humanity; without tolerance we cannot hope that we shall ever reestablish peace and prosperity among us.

One could certainly name many sources of human contention; we are only too fertile when it comes to producing discord. However, as it is above all in matters of conscience and of religion that destructive prejudices triumph, this article is devoted to battling against the reign of prejudice and the specious rights it claims. First, we will establish from the clearest principles that tolerance is just and necessary; then, we will follow the obligations of princes and sovereigns that flow from these principles. What a sad thing it is that it should be necessary to prove such clear and worthwhile truths to human beings who, in failing to recognize them, have turned away from their own nature. Still, if there are some people who even in the present century close their eyes to obvious truths and close their hearts to humanity, should we therefore respond in this work with cowardly, blamable silence? No. Whatever may be the success of our enterprise, we must at least rise up in the name of justice and of humanity, and try yet again to wrest the dagger from the fanatic’s hands, and to rip the blindfold from the superstitious.

I shall begin my article with a very simple observation that is nevertheless quite favorable to the cause of tolerance , which is that because human reason is not a precise and fixed measure, what seems obvious to one person is frequently obscure to another. Clarity, as we know, is only a relative quality, which can come from the light in which we see objects, or from the relationship existing between them and our organs of perception, or perhaps from some other cause. As a result, a certain degree of illumination may be enough to convince one person but be insufficient for another with a less vibrant mind, or who experiences it differently. It follows from this that no one has the right to make his perception the rule, or to demand others assent to his opinions. Wishing me to believe based on your judgment has as much merit as demanding I look through your eyes. It is clear that we each have our own way of seeing and feeling, which depends but little on our intentions. Education, preconceived notions, the objects that surround us, not to mention thousands of unknown circumstances, influence our judgments and modify them in infinite ways. The realm of values is even more complex than the physical world, and human minds resemble one another less than do human bodies. We do, it is true, have some common principles on which we are more or less in agreement. These common starting principles are, however, very few in number and their implications become less clear the further we follow them, like spring waters that become murky the further they flow from their source. Soon enough ideas diverge, and as each person adds their own impressions and draws their own conclusions, the results are unpredictable. The parting is not at first so noticeable; but soon, the further we go, the more we stray, the more we are divided. A thousand paths lead to error, while only one leads to truth: happy the one who knows how to recognize it! Each of us prides himself on his viewpoint, without the ability to persuade others of it. Now, in this conflict of opinions, if it is impossible to resolve our differences and agree on the fine points, we should at least know to reconcile ourselves and unite under the universal principles of tolerance and humanity for as long as our sentiments divide us and we cannot achieve consensus. Is there anything more natural than to bear with one another, and to say to ourselves with as much truth as justice:

“Why should the person who errs cease to be dear to me? Isn’t error the sad lot of humanity? How many times did I think I saw the truth, only in the end to recognize it was false? How many people have I condemned, only to end by adopting their ideas? Ah, without doubt, I have richly earned the right to doubt myself, and I will be careful not to hate my brother because he thinks differently than me!”

Who can therefore see without pain and indignation that the very reason which ought to lead us toward indulgence and humanity – that is, the inadequacy of our understanding and the diversity of human opinions – is what so grievously divides us. We become the accusers and judges of our fellows, we arrogantly indict them in our tribunals, we subject their consciences to an odious cross-examination; and, as if we ourselves were infallible, we grant error no pardon. Yet what could be more pardonable, when error is accidental and when it presents itself to us looking like truth? The praise we offer such errors – isn’t it to truth that we intend to address them? If we bow before a commoner we mistake for the prince, isnt’ the prince still honored by that act? Does our mistake reduce our merit in the prince’s eyes, since he recognizes in us the same intention and rectitude that, in those better instructed, would have been addressed to his person? I can see no stronger argument against intolerance than the fact that humans do not adopt error as error. Sometimes one perseveres in error purposely for reasons of self-interest, and this is when one becomes guilty. But I cannot understand how one can reproach someone who makes a mistake in good faith, someone who mistakes error for truth without malice or negligence, someone who allows himself to become dazzled by a sophism and does not feel the power of the arguments against it. Lacking discernment or insight is not the issue; one is not guilty for being of limited understanding, and errors of the mind cannot be charged against us until our hearts take part in them. The essence of crime is the intention to act directly against our judgment, to do what we know is wrong, to cede to unjust passions, and to trouble on purpose the laws of order that we know; in a word, the entire morality of our actions is in our consciences, in the motives that make us act. But, you say, this or that truth is so obvious, that one cannot ignore it without willfull blindness, without being guilty of stubbornness or bad faith? Well, then, I ask, who are you to pronounce on this and to condemn your brothers? Can you see down to the bottoms of their souls? Are their hidden depths open before your eyes? Do you share with the eternal the incommunicable attribute of examiner of hearts? Is there a subject that demands more reflection, prudence and moderation than that which you decide with such breezy self-assurance? Is it then so easy to mark out the boundaries of truth, to accurately mark the often invisible point where truth ends and error begins, to determine what every person must accept and believe, that which he cannot reject without crime? Once again, I ask who can understand the hidden aspects of consciousness, and all the circumstances to which minds are susceptible? We see every day that even clear truths are subject to dispute, and that there is no theory to which it is impossible to raise objections, often as strong as the evidence that supports the theory. That which is plainly obvious for one person appears false and incomprehensible to another, a result not only of their different degrees of understanding, but also of the differences between minds themselves. Indeed, the greatest geniuses among us are subject to the same diversity of opinions as common folk, and often hold to their positions with even greater self-assurance.

Rather than lingering on these general observations, let us enter into some detail. Truth is sometimes better seen via its opposite rather than head-on; so, if we can show in just a few words the fruitlessness, injustice, and terrible consequences that result from intolerance, then we will have proven the justice and necessity of the virtue that is its opposite.

Of all the means one could employ to arrive at some goal, violence is surely the most useless and the least appropriate to achieve that which one is attempting. Indeed, no matter what the goal, it is necessary at the very least to check into the nature and suitability of the means one has chosen. Nothing is more perceptible than the fact that every cause must have in itself some relationship with the effect that one expects from it; thereby, one might anticipate the effect, and thereby the result of the means one has chosen. To act on material things, to move them, direct them, one uses physical forces; but, to act on minds, to bend them, to shape them, it is necessary to employ different means: reasoning for example, evidence, motivations. One would never try to knock down a rampart or demolish a fortress with a syllogism; by the same token, one will never destroy error or redress false judgments with iron and fire. What, then, is the goal of those who persecute? To convert those they torment; to alter their ideas and feelings and to inspire contrary ones; in a word, to give them a different conscience, a different understanding. But what relation is there between torture and opinions? Is something that appears clear and self-evident to me going to seem false during my suffering? Is a proposition that I see as absurd and contradictory going to become clear to me on the scaffold? Is it, I ask you again, with iron and fire that the truth penetrates and becomes known? Only evidence and reasoning can convince and persuade me; show me the errors in my opinions and I will naturally, effortlessly renounce them. But your torments will never accomplish what your reasoning cannot.

In order that the reader may feel this reasoning more profoundly, permit us to introduce one of those unfortunates who, ready to die for the faith, speaks to his persecutors in the following fashion:

“O my brothers, what is it that you demand of me? How could I satisfy you? Is it in my power to renounce my feelings, my opinions, in order to take on yours? To change, to recast the understanding that God gave me, to see with eyes other than my own, and to be someone other than myself? Were my lips to confess what you desire, would I be responsible where my heart stood, and what would such forced perjury be worth in your eyes? You who persecute me, would you yourself ever resolve to abjure your religion? Wouldn’t you also choose the path of glory, with the same constancy that angers and brings you to arms against me? So why this thoughtless barbarity,this desire to force me to dissemble and to make me guilty of a cowardice that would horrify you?

By what strange blindness have you upended all divine and human laws for me alone? You torment other guilty men to draw the truth from them, but torment me in order to extract lies; you want me to affirm what I am not, and you do not want me to affirm what I am. If pain were to make me renounce the opinions I profess, you would approve my disavowal, however suspect it ought to be to you; you punish my sincerity, you would reward my apostasy, you judge me unworthy of you, because I am honest. Isn’t it only by ceasing to be honest that I could earn my reprieve? As disciples of a master who preached only truth, do you believe you will increase his glory by giving him hypocrites and perjurers for worshippers? If the creed I embrace and defend is a lie, it has every appearance of truth to me; God, who knows my heart, sees all too well that my heart is not a party to the confusions in my mind, and that it is my intention to honor the truth, even if it happens that I am fighting against it.

Ah, yes! What other interest or motive could explain my actions? If I am willing to suffer anything and lose all that is most dear to me on account of beliefs I know to be false, I am only a lunatic or madman, more worthy of your pity than your hatred. But if I am willing to suffer anything, if I face torment and death to guard that which is more precious than life, the rights of conscience and my liberty, what is there in my perseverance that merits indignation on your part? My beliefs, you say, are most dangerous, most worthy of condemnation; but have you nothing but iron and fire to convince me, to bring me round? Stakes and scaffolds are an odd means of persuasion! Even truth would go unrecognized delivered in such form, alas! That is not the way she exercises her power over us, for she has more victorious weapons. Those you use prove nothing but your impotence. If it is true that my fate is your concern, that you deplore my errors, why hasten my ruin, which I might have prevented? Why steal from me the time that God grants me to see the light? Do you seek to please him by trampling on his rights, in anticipating his justice? Do you think you honor a God of peace and charity by making a burnt offering of your brothers, in offering their corpses to him as trophies?”

Such might be, in essence, the words that pain and emotion would rip from that poor fellow, if the flames that engulfed him would permit him to speak his peace. In any case, the more deeply one studies the system espoused by intolerant people, the more one senses its weakness and injustice: at the very least, they might believe that forced submission, given without conviction, could be pleasing to the Creator. But, given that intention is necessary to make the sacrifice worthwhile, and interior belief is above all what the Creator requires, how must this Infinite Being regard audacious humans who dare attack his rights and profane his most beautiful handiwork by tyrannizing hearts he seeks for himself? There is no king in the world who would deign to accept mere flattery, and yet they do not blush to demand such insincere praise for God. In the end, what the so-vaunted success of the persecutors amounts to is merely to make hypocrites or martyrs, cowards or heros. A weak and pusillanimous soul will shrink in the face of torment, and tremblingly abjure its faith while hating the author of its crime. A generous soul, on the contrary, will contemplate the torture prepared for it with dry eyes, staying firm and unchanged, regarding its persecutors with pity, and finally flying to its release as a triumph. Experience is only too clear; when fanaticism has released torrents of blood on the earth, have we not seen innumerable martyrs remain indignant and unyielding? And as for forced conversions, have we not seen them dissolve along with the peril that provoked them, the effect ceasing with the cause? Did not those who gave way for a time return to the fold as soon as it was possible, deploring with their own people their prior weakness and joyfully reclaiming their natural liberty? I cannot conceive of a more horrible blasphemy than to claim to be authorized by God to practice intolerance.

Thus far it has been shown that violence is far more likely to confirm those one persecutes in their belief than to detach them from error and awaken their sleeping conscience, as some claim.

“It is not,” said a political theorist, “by filling the soul with the grand goal of martyrdom, by hastening its encounter with the critical moment when religious truth must be of highest importance, that one has manages to convert someone. Penal laws regarding religion imprint fear, it is true, but as religion also has its own penal laws, which also inspire fear, when trapped between the effect of these two different fears souls become monstrous. [1] We do no seek, you say, to engage people in betraying their consciences, but rather to move them by fear or hope to shake off their preconceptions, and to distinguish truth from the errors they profess. Oh really? Who, I beg you, manages to at the critical moment to undertake the meditation and self-examination you propose? The most serene state, the deepest focus, the most entire liberty are hardly enough to sustain such self-reflection, and yet you suggest a soul surrounded by the horrors of death, confronted without respite by the most frightening sights, might be more capable of recognizing and seizing upon that truth that it didn’t recognize in more tranquil moments. What an absurdity! What a contradiction!”

Again, as we have argued, the inevitable result of violent methods is to reinforce the persecuted in their opinions, by virtue of the very misfortunes that they bring. Violence turns them against the opinions of their enemies by virtue of the ways these enemies present their ideas and inspires in the persecuted the same hatred for their enemies’ religion that they feel for the enemies themselves.

If in fact they know the truth they betray so unjustly, the persecutors ought to examine themselves. They undermine truth with their imposture, taking up its arms and lining up under its banner; wouldn’t this misrepresentation itself suffice to inspire prejudice against the truth, and prevent those who might otherwise have embraced it from recognizing what it is? Whatever the persecutors claim to the contrary, truth needs no support but herself in order to survive and to capture minds and hearts. Truth shines with her own splendor and fights with her own weapons, drawing her characteristic light and power from within her own bosom. She would blush at aid from outside, which could only obscure or divide her glory. Her sole obligation derives from her very excellence; she delights, she compels, she subjugates by her beauty; her triumph is simply to appear; her power come from being what she is. Error, on the other hand, is weak and impotent on her own, and would make little headway without violence and constraint. She carefully avoids any examination or clarification because these can only harm her cause. Error likes to fight her battles and spread her polluted dogmas in the midst of the darkness of superstition and ignorance. That is where, in defiance of the rights of conscience and of reason, error reigns unchecked through despotism and intolerance, governing her own subjects with an iron scepter. If a sage dares raise objections, fear will soon silence that voice. Woe to the audacious soul who professes the truth in the midst of truth’s enemies. Stop then, persecutors, stop, I say again, defending truth with the weapons of deceit, stop stealing from Christianity the glory of its founders; stop calumnizing the Gospel, stop confusing the son of Mary with the child of Ishmael. By what right would you associate yourself with the former, and with the methods he chose to spread his doctrine, if you are following the path blazed by the latter? Don’t the very principles you espouse condemn you? Jesus, your model, employed only gentleness and persuasion; Muhammed, on the other hand, seduced some and forced others to be silent. Jesus called people to take up his work, Muhammed to take up the sword. Jesus said “see and believe,” Muhammed commanded,“die or believe.” Of which of these masters will you be the disciples? Indeed, I cannot affirm strongly enough that truth and error differ as much in their methods as in their essence. Truth’s divine nature is marked by gentleness, persuasion, and liberty, and when she presents herself to me in these guises, my heart is instantly drawn toward her; in contrast, where violence and tyranny reign, it is not truth but her ghost that I see. In sum, did you think that in wanting to establish universal tolerance , we we seeking the progress of error rather than that of truth? If only all humankind, adopting our principles, were to accord one another mutual support, give up their most closely held prejudices, and regard truth as a good held in common by all, one whose enjoyment it would be as unjust to seek to deprive others as to think belonging only to themselves; if only all humankind, ceasing to chain themselves within their own view of things, were to journey to the ends of the earth, in order to share in peace their feelings and opinions, weighing them impartially in the scales of doubt and reason, do you not think that in the silence of all passions and prejudices, one would see truth reclaim her rights, gradually extend her empire, and that the darkness of error would fall and flee before her, just as the shadows dissipate in the light of day?

I do not claim that error would make no progress in such a world, nor that the infidel would easily abjure the lies that longheld prejudice and habit have rendered respectable. I merely argue that the advance of truth would be faster, because with her natural advantage she would find fewer obstacles to conquer in order to penetrate people’s hearts. In any case, no matter what they say, nothing is more pernicious to truth than the principles of intolerance that torment and degrade human beings, enslaving their opinions to the native soil that nurtured them, closing their active intelligence in a narrow circle of prejudices, forbidding doubt and reflection as if they were crimes, and crushing them with anathema if they dare reason for a moment and think differently than we do. What better means could one choose to make errors eternal and keep truth in chains?

Without lingering any further on the system of those who are intolerant, let us review quickly the consequences that flow from it and judge the cause by its effects. One could do nothing worse for mankind than confuse all the principles that govern human actions, knocking down the walls that separate justice from injustice, vice from virtue, rending the social fabric, arming a prince against his subjects and subjects against their prince, setting fathers, spouses, friends, brothers against one another, using the altar candles to light the torches of the furies – in a word, rendering human beings hateful and barbarous towards one another and stifling in peoples’ hearts every feeling of justice and humanity. And yet these are the inevitable results of the intolerance we are fighting. The most heinous crimes—perjuries, calumnies, treasons, parricides – all are justified by the cause, all are sanctified by the motive, namely the interests of the Church. The necessity of extending its reign and forbidding resistance at any cost authorize and indeed consecrate everything. What a strange reversal of ideas, an incomprehensible abuse of everything that is most noble and holy! Religion, which was given to humans to unite them and make them better, becomes in this way the very pretext for humanity’s most horrible lapses. Every assault committed in religion’s name is somehow legitimized; the height of wickedness is transformed into the highest of virtues; those whom earthly justice would condemn to death are called saints and heros; in the name of the Christian God, the abominable cults of Saturn and Moloch come to life again; pride and fanaticism triumph, and the world watches with horror as monsters are deified. Let no one accuse us of polemicizing; it is easy to defend ourselves against such a charge, and we tremble at the proof we have in hand. Rather than boast of such things, however, it is better to try to forget these sad testaments to humanity’s shame and crimes, and to spare ourselves a too humiliating picture of mankind. Still, it is certain that through intolerance you will open the door to an inexhaustible source of evils. As soon as different sides claim the same rights, each sect will deploy violence and constraint of conscience, the weaker side in one place will become the oppressor in some other locale, and might will make right. The losers will be named the heretics, and will lament only their weakness; all it would take is a powerful army to establish their point of view and disable their adversaries. The fate of truth will rise and fall with these battles, and lo and behold the most ferocious mortals will also be those who end up holding the right beliefs. Everywhere one turns there will be pyres, scaffolds, condemnations, and torture. Calvinists, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Jews and Greeks, all will devour one another like wild beasts; the places where the Gospel reigns will be marked by carnage and desolation; inquisitors will be our masters; Jesus’s cross will become the banner of crime, and his disciples will become drunk with the blood of their brothers. The pen drops before such horrors, and yet they all flow directly from intolerance. I do not believe that anyone will here raise the objection that has been so often debunked, namely that since the true Church alone is authorized to use violence and constraint of conscience, heretics cannot act against error without committing a crime. Such puerile sophistry refutes itself, in supposing that those we call heretics understand themselves as such and will therefore tranquilly offer themselves up to have their thoats cut without calling for retribution.

Let us conclude that intolerance, universally established, would turn humans against one another and give birth to endless wars of conscience. Even supposing that non-Christians could not be motivated to persecute by religious principles, they would become so at least for reasons of politics and self-interest, for as Christians cannot tolerate those who do not accept their ideas, we would see all the world’s people will justifiably band together against them, and plot the ruin of these enemies of humankind, who under the pretense of religion see nothing illegitimate about tormenting and enslaving others. In that sense, I ask, how could we condemn a prince of Asia or of the New World who hangs the first missionary that we send to convert him? Is not the most fundamental duty of a sovereign to protect peace and tranquility in his state, and to conscientiously outlaw the dangerous people who at first clothe their motives with a hypocritical gentleness, waiting only for the moment when they have the power to spread barbarous and seditious creeds? Christians have only themselves to blame if other peoples who have learned about their principles will not tolerate them, if they see in them only the assassins of America or the disturbers of the Indies, and if their holy religion, destined to go forth and multiply in the world has, with reason, been banished from it because of their excesses and ferocity.

Finally, it seems pointless to us to cite the principles of the Gospels against the practitioners of intolerance. The Gospel extends and develop the principle of natural equality. It reminds the persecutors of the lessons and the example of their noble master whose every breath was gentleness and charity, and evoke the behavior of the first Christians, who knew to bless and pray for those that persecuted them. We will certainly not reproduce here those kinds of arguments, once used very powerfully by the ancient Fathers of the Church against the Neros and Diocletians, because they have become ridiculous and easy to discredit since the era of Constantine the Great. One senses that in a short article, we could only scratch the surface of such abundant material; therefore, since we have laid out the principles that seemed most universal and self-evident to us, all that remains to be done to achieve our goal is to sketch the duty of sovereigns relative to the different sects within society.

Incedo per ignes [2]

In such a delicate matter, I will hardly venture forth without authority. In laying out several general principles, it will be easy to see the conclusions that follow.

I. It is not possible to penetrate to the essence of the question unless one first distinguishes the status of the church and priest from that of the magistrate. The state or republic has as its goal the conservation of its members, the protection of their liberty, life, tranquility, posessions, and privileges; the Church, by contrast, is a society whose goal is the perfection of human beings and the salvation of their souls. Sovereignty is concerned above all with life here and now; the Church looks above all toward the life to come. Preserving the peace against all those who might try to disturb it, that is the duty and the right of the sovereign; however, the sovereign’s right ends where matters of conscience begin. These two jurisdictions must always remain separate; they cannot encroach upon one another without producing infinite troubles.

II. The salvation of the soul is not in the purview of the magistrate and is not revealed by the law, neither by natural law nor by political convention. God never commanded that people bend their consciences to the views of their monarchs, and no person can promise in good faith to believe and think as their prince commands. We have already observed that nothing is more autonomous than feelings. We might on the outside, say the words that we acquiesce to another’s opinion, but it is no more possible for us to acquiesce on the inside, against our own reason, than it is for us to cease being who we are. So, what power could the magistrate have over conscience? One of force and authority? Religion is a matter of persuasion, not command. This is a truth so simple that even the very apostles of intolerance do not dare to refute it, once passion and prejudice cease to cloud their reason. For, supposing that in religious matter, force had its place, if force could persuade (let us for just a moment engage such an absurd proposition), then it would be necessary, in order to reach salvation, that one be born the subject of an orthodox prince. The merit of the true Christian would be a hazard of birth. Moreover, it would be necessary to change one’s beliefs at succession in order to follow that of the prince, to be a Catholic subject of Mary and then a Protestant under Elizabeth. Once one abandons principles, one no longer sees where the evil might end.

III. Let us expand on this, borrowing the language of the author of the contrat social . Here is how he makes this point:

The right which the social compact gives the Sovereign over the subjects does not exceed the limits of public expediency.The subjects then owe the Sovereign an account of their opinions only to such an extent as they matter to the community. Now, it matters very much to the community that each citizen should have a religion. That will make him love his duty; but the dogmas of that religion concern the State and its members only so far as they have reference to morality and to the duties which he who professes them is bound to do to others. There is therefore a purely civil profession of faith of which the Sovereign should fix the articles, not exactly as religious dogmas, but as social sentiments without which a man cannot be a good citizen or a faithful subject.While it can compel no one to believe them, it can banish from the State whoever does not believe them — it can banish him, not for impiety, but as an anti-social being, incapable of truly loving the laws and justice, and of sacrificing, at need, his life to his duty. [3]

IV. One can draw a number of valid conclusions from these words. The first is that sovereigns must not tolerate dogmas that are inimical to civil society. They do not, it is true, have any right to inspect religious conscience, but they must punish scandalous speech that could give rise in people’s hearts to depravity and disregard for duty. Atheists, in particular, take off the sole bridle capable of restraining the powerful and rob the weak of their only hope. They disturb all human laws in demolishing the authority the laws gain via divine sanction. They leave standing no distinction between what is just and unjust other than frivolous, man-made distinctions, and see no shame in crime beyond the punishment of the criminal. Atheists, I say, must not demand tolerance in their favor. We should first instruct them, then exhort them with kindness, but if they persist, they should be punished. Finally, break with them and banish them from our society, as they themselves first broke the tie that binds society together. Second, sovereigns must vigorously challenge the schemes of those who, disguising their greed under a pretext of piety, seek to defraud individuals or even princes themselves. Thirdly and above all, sovereigns must prohibit with vigilance those dangerous groups that subject their members to a double authority by forming a state within a state. By breaking political union, releasing their members from their obligations, and dissolving their members’ bonds with their native land, these groups focus their members’ affections and interests within the group itself. They are thereby prepared to sacrifice the whole of society to the group’s particular interests. In a word, let the state be one , let the priest be a citizen first, let him be subject like anyone else to the sovereign power and to the laws of his country, let his purely spiritual authority limit itself to instructing, exhorting, and preaching virtue, let him learn from his divine master that his reign is not of this world, because if you place the sword and the censer in the same hands for even one instant, all is lost.

The general rule is as follows: respect the rights of conscience as inviolable insofar as they do not trouble society. Errors about theoretical matters do not concern the state; a diversity of opinions will always reign among beings as imperfect as are humans; truth produces heresies much as the sun produces impurites and spots. Do not go and make this inevitable problem worse by deploying iron and fire to root it out. Punish crime, but have pity for error, never granting truth any other weapons than gentleness, good example, and persuasion. In matters concerning changes of faith, invitations are more successful than punishments. Punishment has never had anything but destructive consequences.

V. Some will object to these principles by citing the difficulties that result from a multiplicity of religions, and the advantages produced by religion uniformity within a state. We shall first recall words on this subject by the author of L’Esprit des Lois:

Ideas of uniformity infallibly make an impression on little souls. They discover therein a kind of perfection, which they recognize because it is impossible for them not to see it; the same authorized weights, the same measures in trade, the same laws in the state, the same religion in all its parts. But is this always right and without exception? Is the evil of changing constantly less than that of suffering? And does not a greatness of genius consist rather in distinguishing between those cases in which uniformity is requisite, and those in which there is a necessity for differences? [4]

That is, why idealize a perfection that is incompatible with our nature? Humans will always be divided in their opinions; the history of humanity furnishes us with neverending proof of this fact. It would be the most chimerical of all projects to try and make everyone agree. But, you will say, political union requires that we establish religious uniformity and that we scrupulously prohibit all unorthodox beliefs. In other words, it requires that we make people into automatons, teaching them only the beliefs of their native land, never daring to question or think more deeply, making them slaves to the most barbarous prejudices just as do our foes. But, you respond, doesn’t having multiple religions cause so many problems and engender so much division? Your argument becomes the proof of my central point, because it is intolerance that is the source of these problems. If only different groups would accord one another mutual support, and express their rivalry through exemplary actions, moral rectitude, and the love of law and country. If these were the ways that each sect sought to prove the merit of its beliefs, peace and harmony would soon reign, and a variety of opinions would be like the dissonances of music that do not spoil the tonality of the whole.

Some will not give up, noting that religious change often brings revolutions in government and constitutional order. To that charge I would respond, again, that whatever odious consequences are imputed to religious change, it is actually intolerance that is to blame. Had the religious innovators been granted tolerance, or combatted with no weapon save the Gospel, the state would not have witnessed such tumult. Instead, the defenders of the dominant faith rose in fury against the sectarians, harnessing the power of arms to fight them, changing the law for their bloody purposes, kindling discord and fanaticism in people’s hearts, and shamelessly making their victims pay the price of the disorder they themselves had created.

As for those who under the pretext of religion seek only to disrupt society, foment sedition, and throw off the yoke of the law—punish them severely. We are certainly not their apologists. But do not confuse these guilty sorts with those who ask you only for the liberty to think and profess the faith that they have judged the best, and who live in other respects as faithful subjects of the state.

But, you will still object, the prince is defender of the faith, he is obligated to protect its purity and severely discipline those who threaten it. If reasoning and exhortation are not enough, it is not for no reason that he raises his sword, it is to punish the evildoer and force rebels back into the bosom of the Church. Well, I ask, is that really what you want, barbarian? To strangle your brother in order to save him? Did God himself give you this horrific task, placing in your hands the responsibility for exacting his vengeance? How is it that you know that he wishes to be honored in the same fashion as a demon? Alas, my unfortunate, the God of peace rejects your ghastly sacrifices, which are worthy only of someone like you.

We shall not seek here to define the precise limits of tolerance , that is to distinguish the charitable response that reason and humanity demand toward those who err from a blameworthy indifference that considers all human opinions equally valid. We are preaching practical tolerance, not theoretical relativism. There is, one senses well enough, a difference between tolerating a religion and approving of its tenets. Readers interested in knowing more on this subject may wish to consult Bayle’s philosophical commentary on the matter, in which, in our opinion, that great genius surpassed himself.

1. The early parts of this passage are drawn from Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws 25:12. My translation.

2. Latin, “I march through the flames.” Cited from the Odes of the Latin poet Horace; see also Rousseau’s Emile, book 4, in which Rousseau cites the same verse in a similar context.

3. Rousseau, Social Contract book IV, Chapter 8 “Civil Religion,” translated by G.D.H. Cole (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1913), online at http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon.htm. Romilli has abridged the passage and left off the last of Rousseau’s sentences: “If any one, after publicly recognising these dogmas, behaves as if he does not believe them, let him be punished by death: he has committed the worst of all crimes, that of lying before the law.”

4. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws 29: 18 translated by Thomas Nugent, revised by J. V. Prichard (London: G. Bell & Sons, Ltd., 1914), online at http://www.constitution.org/cm/sol.txt.