But it was not the Church only that was persuaded of the essentially dangerous and anti-social character of heresy. Partly, no doubt, as the result of the Church’s teaching through many generations, but certainly of their own accord and not as the result of any direct instruction, both secular rulers and the ordinary laity were equally convinced.[489] They all lived in a thoroughly theocratic atmosphere. The prince sincerely saw in the heretic an enemy of all authority, and therefore of his own.[490] Secular legislation was just as unequivocal in its treatment of heresy as was Canon law. To the ordinary layman the heretic appeared as a thoroughly cross-grained, cantankerous, dangerous person, certainly of some immoral propensities and perhaps sexually perverted.[491] Such was the mediæval point of view; and, once granted the necessary premises, it is extremely logical and exceedingly hard to combat. Now-a-days we do not accept those premises; but in the Middle Ages we should probably not have dreamed of questioning them. On the extraordinarily interesting and important question of the causes of this change of attitude authorities do, and are likely to, differ, though many students will agree in combining their conclusions. To those who, like John Stuart Mill and Lecky for instance, attribute religious persecution almost entirely to the doctrine of exclusive salvation, the causes of the growth of tolerance will appear to be the extension of the sceptical spirit and the process of the secularization of politics.[492] Others, such as Bishop Creighton (who will not agree that persecution is to be explained by the doctrine of exclusive salvation at all),[493] or as Sir F. Pollock (who classifies different types of intolerance—tribal, political, social), insist strongly upon the simple factor of experience. ‘It is not the demonstration of abstract rights, but the experience of inutility, that has made governments leave off persecuting.’[494] After all, the great justification of liberty of thought lies not in the attempted demonstration of a natural right, but in the records of the painful process whereby toleration has been achieved.[495] It would have saved an infinity of bloodshed and misery, would have freed the palimpsest of history of some of its most terrible blots, could the principle of toleration have been established without that awful struggle. But none of the great triumphs of mankind have been achieved save after centuries of effort, loss and failure.