The factors that have brought about this extension have been many and complex, and it is perhaps a hopeless task to attempt to enumerate them and to apportion to each its share of influence. Undoubtedly, it has been produced largely by the influence of a relatively small number of enlightened leaders of opinion, such men as Wilberforce, Stuart Mill, Shaftesbury, John Locke, Rousseau, and Voltaire—men whose original intellectual powers enabled them to criticise and reject the settled principles of their time. It was a work of liberation from custom and traditional prejudice effected by the spirit of inquiry, which questioned the validity of the old narrow conceptions of the relations of men and peoples, the old narrow prejudices of caste and nation, and discovered their fallacies to the world; discovered, for example, that men of a religious persuasion slightly different from one’s own are not necessarily wicked, nor those of a different nationality necessarily despicable and possessed of no ideas worthy of admiration and adoption. But the ground was prepared for the reception of the teachings of such men by the conflicts of men who desired nothing of tolerance and equality and liberty. This is best illustrated by the history of religious toleration. As I said before, religion is essentially conservative and intolerant of heresies. The first effect on religion of that revival and liberation of the spirit of inquiry which we call the Renascence, was to produce not religious toleration, but rather a bitter conflict of mutually intolerant sects. And religious toleration was eventually achieved largely by the realisation of the necessity of compromise among these warring and constantly multiplying sects; it was found impossible to weed out heresy by persecution. Yet who can doubt that the Church, if it believed that it saw its way to secure the universal acceptance of its doctrines by means of persecution, would long hesitate to return to its ancient practices? The coming of religious toleration was due to the application of the spirit of inquiry to religious systems; these inquiries produced irreconcilable sects, whose strife prepared the way for compromise and toleration.