It is for that reason that the Church has occasionally tolerated even the worship of heretics, and heathens, when the number of infidels was great.” (_Summa theol._, 2 a; q. x, a. II.) One readily perceives the nature of _tolerance_ in that sense. It does not in the least recognize the right of those who are the object of it: if it does not maltreat them, it is simply to _avoid a greater evil_, or rather because its power is too small, and the number of infidels is too large. A professor of theology at the Sorbonne has recently contested the charge of Catholic intolerance. (M. Alfred Fouillée had just spoken of it in his _Social Science_.) He did so for reasons that may be cited as further proof. “Neither to-day, nor _ever, in any epoch of its history_, has the Catholic Church intended to _impose acceptance of the truth by violence_. All great theologians have taught that the act of faith is a voluntary act, which presupposes an illumination of the mind; _but they have also taught that constraint may favour this illumination, and in especial may preserve others from_ a bad example, from a contagious darkness. The Christian Church has had no need of the sword to evangelize the nations; if it has shed blood in its triumph, it has been _its own_.” Has it, then, not shed the blood of others? If one counts all the murders committed by intolerance in the name of absolute dogma, in every country in the world; if one could measure all the bloodshed; if one could gather together all the dead bodies—would the pile not mount higher than the spires of the cathedrals and the domes of the temples, where man still goes, with unalterable fervour, to invoke and bless the “God of Love”? Faith in a God who talks and acts, who has a history of His own, His Bible, His prophet and His priest, will always end by being intolerant. By adoring a jealous and vengeful God, one becomes in the end His accomplice. One tacitly approves all the crimes committed in His name and often (if one believes the Holy Scriptures) commanded by Him. One endeavours to forget these things when they are too stained with blood and filth. The monuments of such bloody scenes have been razed, and the places to which the strongest memories are attached have been purified and transformed: the partisans of certain dogmas need to wash their hearts also in lustral water. [Sidenote: And a half-caste public spirit.]