THE RADIANCIES OF TOLERATION

I want to radiate my conception of what, in religion, is commonly termed "toleration." To me the term is a misnomer. Its use is based upon a gross and small-minded misunderstanding of the right, inherent to each human being, to live according to the dictates of his own conscience in all things that do not militate against what the majority conceive to be the public good.

What is religion? My own definition is that it is the highest within myself reaching out to the highest I can see or conceive outside of myself. In this "reaching out," this "following after," or "apprehending," as St. Paul calls it, I alone must determine that which I will seek for. Others may aid me in my search, others may point out to me and for me that which they have reached, or are striving to reach, and in that way they may aid and help me. But for another to say, "This is that alone for which you should strive," or "That is the supreme end of all effort," and to refuse me any right of appeal to my own judgment is to stultify my own God-given powers and to make a mere puppet of me. Hence I stand, or fall, on the platform of individualism in religion. I affirm that it is a purely personal matter, that there can be no coercion, no forcing of any individual to adopt a general plan which another individual asserts that all must follow to their eternal well-being, or disregard to their own damnation.

The attitude I would radiate is this. For myself I know, or am learning, what I must believe, what I must strive for, what I must seek to become. So long as this belief, this striving, this aim, does not interfere with the exercise of the belief, the striving, the aim of others, and is not subversive of the public good, I demand my inherent right of individual belief, individual striving, individual aim. When one who differs from me offers me his "charity," or his "toleration," I regard his offer as an insolence and small-minded impertinence. I want no charity, I refuse all toleration, for I own as many inherent rights as the one who thus presumes to offer me his charity and his tolerance. He needs my charity and tolerance to cover his individualism as much as I need his. I have as much right to offer mine to him as he to offer his to me. Hence, boldly, fearlessly, restful in my God-given right, I believe, I strive, I aim to reach God as best I may. But in the very self-assertiveness of this right it is an essential condition of my perfect freedom that I absolutely accord it to all others, no matter how diverse from mine their beliefs, their strivings, their aims. There must be no mental reservations, no subterfuges, no playing with one's own intellect or conscience. The freedom to others must be as large and complete as the freedom I demand for myself, for, wherein I limit, even in my most secret mind and heart, the freedom of my neighbor, I am giving to him the right to limit me. "With what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again."

I resent any interference with my right to believe as I choose. My friends, G—— and S——, are Catholics. In the exercise of their God-given right they accept a different faith from mine. They are equally earnest, equally intelligent, equally sincere in their profession of faith as am I. Just as I resent any interference with my own right to believe as I choose, so do I resent, with equal, and even stronger fervor, any interference with G——'s and S——'s rights to believe as they choose.

I say with "even stronger fervor." You may ask, "Why with stronger fervor?" The reason is this. I find, within my own soul, a greater readiness to demand freedom for myself than I do to accord it to those who differ from me. Hence honor demands that I watch with even closer scrutiny the rights of my neighbors than I guard against encroachments upon my own. Selfishness will care for my own. Indifference to my neighbors may lead me to be careless of theirs.

Other neighbors, P—— and X——, are Christian Scientists; still others, A—— and J——, are Unitarians; others, D—— and C——, are Universalists; and I have friends, dear to my heart, whom I love with true, pure fervor and who, I am assured, love me with an equal sincerity, who are Jews, Hopis, Wallapais, Havasupais, Apaches, Greeks, Mohammedans, Hindoos, Theosophists, Spiritualists, Atheists, Shakers, Agnostics, Communists, and Mormons. Take these beliefs and non-beliefs with the one I profess and the others I have referred to, and there is as perfect a hodge-podge of diversities and differences as one can possibly imagine. Do I attempt to reconcile them? No! Do I agree with them all? No! Can I harmonize them all? No! It is neither my business to reconcile them, agree with them, nor harmonize them. I am not sent to earth to make all men's minds and souls alike, any more than Burbank is sent to make all flowers and plants, shrubs and trees alike. My business is to develop and live my own life, in harmony with my own beliefs, aims, and strivings, to the utmost, and seek the utmost good for my fellow. And in no way can I better do that than by aiding him to live his highest beliefs to the utmost, helping him in his strivings, make clearer to him the beauty of his own aims. Hence, even as I want all good men and true to bid me a hearty, an earnest, a sincere "God-speed!" in my own strivings, so do I, with all my heart, bid my many and diverse-believing, diverse-aiming friends God-speed in their endeavors.

If, for the public good, I should ever be called upon to pass judgment upon any of the actions that are the result of the beliefs of my neighbors and friends, and I, with my fellow jurors, deemed these actions subversive of the public good, I could unite with my fellows in suppressing these actions. But this would be done with a perfectly open heart, without malice, without censure even, without any presumption, without any interference with the principle I have sought clearly to state and exemplify. It would be done as the result of our united judgment upon a matter of public policy—not a fixed, established assurance of right or wrong, but as a matter wherein, for the benefit of others, we regarded the restriction of an inherent and God-given freedom a justifiable act.

Herein, to my mind, lies the power of the argument of the political prohibitionists. They seek to prohibit men from the exercise of their undoubted right to manufacture and sell alcoholic stimulants—their undoubted right provided it could be done without injury to the bodies and souls of their fellow-beings. No one can claim an inherent right to injure his neighbor willfully and deliberately. No one can claim a God-given right to transgress God's own laws. Those who believe in God believe He has ordained laws for the government of all that He has created. The interpretation of the "moral law" as handed down to us in the Scriptures is, in the main, similar in all creeds in Christendom, and practically the same among all who, without so-called creeds, believe in the brotherhood of man.

Upon those points wherein men have conscientiously differed there have been instances where the ruling majority has restricted or taken away the rights of the minority to put their beliefs into practice, because the consensus of opinion has decided such acts to be contrary to public policy or public good, but it does not necessarily follow that the interference was based upon incontrovertible ideas of right or wrong.

My contention is that no man or body of men has the inherent right to interfere with the beliefs and acts of their fellow-beings who are sincerely and conscientiously seeking to love God with all the heart and their neighbors as themselves, but in all countries where the majority is supposed to rule it is expedient to submit to prevailing customs and laws unless conscience imperatively demands otherwise. In any case, however, it does not necessarily follow that the majority is always in the right and the minority in the wrong, especially in religious matters.