The men who made that immense advance--the achievement of religious toleration--possible, were not completely right and had not a water-tight theory amongst them; they did not bring the millenium, but they achieved an immense step. They _were_ pioneers of religious freedom, yet were themselves tyrants and oppressors; those who abolished slavery _did_ a good work, though much of the world _was_ left in industrial servitude; it _was_ a good thing to abolish judicial torture, though much of our penal system did yet remain barbaric; it _was_ a real advance to recognise the errors upon which these things rested, although that recognition did not immediately achieve a complete, logical, symmetrical and perfect change, because mankind does not advance that way. And so with war. Pacifism does not even pretend to be a dogma: it is an attempt to correct in men's minds some of the errors and false theories out of which war grows. The reply to this is generally that the inaptitude of men for clear thinking and the difficulties of the issues involved will render any decision save the sheer clash of physical force impossible; that the field of foreign politics is such a tangle that the popular mind will always fall back upon decision by force. As a matter of fact the outstanding principles which serve to improve human conduct, are quite simple and understandable, as soon as they have been shorn of the sophistries and illusions with which the pundits clothe them. The real work of the reformers is to hack away these encumbering theories. The average European has not followed, and could not follow, the amazing and never-ending disputation on obscure theological points round which raged the Reformation; but the one solid fact which did emerge from the whole was the general realization that whatever the truth might be in all this confusion, it was quite evidently wicked and futile to attempt to compel conformity to any one section of it by force; that in the interests of all force should be withheld; because if such queries were settled by the accident of predominant force, it would prove, not which was right, but which was stronger. So in such things as witchcraft. The learned and astute judges of the 18th century, who sent so many thousands to their death for impossible crimes, knew far more of the details of witchcraft than do we, and would beat us hopelessly in an argument on the subject; but all their learning was of no avail, because they had a few simple facts, the premises, crooked, and we have them straight; and all that we need to know in this amazing tangle of learned nonsense, is that the probabilities are against an old woman having caused a storm at sea and drowned a Scottish King. And so with the French Revolution. What the Encyclopaedists and other pioneers of that movement really did for the European peoples in that matter, was not to elaborate fantastic schemes of constitution making, but by their argumentation to achieve the