Side by side with the increase in those who deny is a growth in the numbers of those who come to regard apathy, suspended judgment, or a lack of interest in a religious matter as a state of positive belief. There are agnostics quite literally all over the place. Belief peters down into acceptance, acceptance becomes a probability, a probability declines into a reasonable doubt, and a reasonable doubt drifts into "it is highly conjectural and indeed extremely unlikely," or something of that sort. Tolerance was once an instrument for ensuring that truth should not be suppressed; it is now an excuse for refusing to bother. There is, in fact, a growing disrespect for truth. A great many men went to the stake years ago rather than admit the possibility that they were wrong; they protested, so far as human endurance allowed them to protest, that they were orthodox and that their persecutors, and not they, were the heretics. To-day a bunch of Cambridge men calls itself "The Heretics" and imagines it has found a clever title. At the same time there is an apparent decline in the power to believe. The average politician (the principal type of twentieth-century propagandist) hardly ever makes a speech which does not contain one at least of the following phrases: "I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that . . ." "We are all subject to correction, but as far as we know . . ." "In this necessarily imperfect world . . ." "So far as one is able to judge . . ." "Appearances are notoriously deceptive, but . . ." "Human experience is necessarily limited to . . ." "We can never be really sure . . ." "Pilate asked, 'What is truth?' Ah, my brethren, what indeed?" "The best minds of the country have failed to come to an agreement on this question; one can only surmise . . ." "Art is long and life is short. Art to-day is even longer than it used to be." Now the politician, to do him justice, has retained the courage of his convictions to a greater extent than the orthodox believer in God. Men are still prepared to make Home Rule the occasion of bloodshed, or to spend the midnight hours denouncing apparent political heresies. But whereas the politician, like the orthodox believer once pronounced apologetics, they now merely utter apologies. To-day, equipped as never before with the heavy artillery of argument in the shape of Higher Criticism, research, blue-books, statistics, cheap publications, free libraries, accessible information, public lectures, and goodness only knows what else, the fighting forces of the spiritual and temporal decencies lie drowsing as in a club-room, placarded "Religion and politics must not be discussed here."