The struggle we have been describing has not been related at length because of its antiquarian or dramatic interest. In toleration of opinions lies the one hope for the advancement of the human race. If the earthly end of man “is the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole,”[712] free scope must be provided for differing opinion, and varieties in the experiment of living. The contest in Massachusetts happened to be fought out on religious lines, because it was an age of religious interests. It happened to be fought against the ministers and magistrates because, in that time and place, they represented the forces opposed to freedom and to change. But there are other elements in man's nature than religion; and tyranny and opposition to all innovation may be as securely enthroned in the public opinion of a democracy as in the leaders of a theocracy. So far as experience has shown, they are certain to be, in a socialistic or communistic state; and the battle for toleration of opinion, for the liberty of the individual personality to expand along its own unique lines, for the chance of any further development in the possibilities for the advancement of the race, may have to be fought out again upon a grander scale than any the world has yet seen. Footnote 712: Humboldt; cited by J. S. Mill, _On Liberty_ (Oxford), p. 71. That the course which the Massachusetts authorities took was wholly unnecessary was proved by the events in the other colonies. What happened was largely the consequence of their own acts. Rhode Island had shown the just, and, at the same time, the wise course to pursue. As she pointed out, wherever Quakers were not persecuted, they gave no trouble. One of the glories of the present nation is its complete toleration, in so far, at least, as religion is concerned; and its hard-won liberty is in no small measure due to the people of its smallest state, and to the noble men and women who suffered and gave their lives that the power of the Massachusetts theocracy might be broken, and the human mind unshackled. The debt which, in other ways, America owes to the largest of the Puritan colonies is too great to require that aught but the truth be told. It is not necessary to exalt erring and fallible men to the rank of saints in order to show our gratitude to them or our loyalty to our country. But the leaders and citizens of Rhode Island, the martyred Quakers, and the men and women of Massachusetts and the other colonies, who so lived and wrought and died that the glory of an heritage of intellectual freedom might be ours, are the Americans whom, in the struggle we have been reciting, it should be our duty to honor. CHAPTER XII THE THEORY OF EMPIRE