In order to understand how legitimate religious intolerance appears from its own point of view, we must remember with what perfect calm we forbid and punish acts that are directly contrary to the actual conditions of our social life (for example, the public outrage of good morals, etc.). Now we know that all religion superposes another society upon the actual one; it conceives men’s life as enveloped and bounded by the life of the gods; it must therefore seek to maintain the conditions of this supernatural society with not less energy than we employ to maintain our human society, and the conditions of this superior society lead to the multiplication of all the prohibitive rules that we have previously imposed on our existence with our fellows; imaginary walls cannot avoid being added to the walls and ditches already impeding circulation on the earth’s surface; if we live with the gods, we must expect to be jostled by them, and curbed in their name. This state of things cannot disappear entirely until we cease to believe we are co-members of a society with the gods, until we see them transmuted into simple ideals. Ideals never necessitate the exclusiveness and intolerance that realities do. [Sidenote: Tolerance highly intellectual.] On the whole, one must distinguish two kinds of virtue on which religion has influence. The first are the virtues that may be called positive and active, of the heart and of instinct, like charity and generosity; at all times and in all countries they have existed among men; religion exalts them, and to Christianity the honour is due of having developed them to their highest degree. The second category includes the purely intellectual virtues, whose operation consists rather in checking and confining than in extending the sphere of one’s activity—the virtues of self-possession, of abstinence, and of tolerance, which are quite modern really and the result of science, which has brought about a clearer knowledge of its own limitations even. Tolerance is a very complex virtue, much more intellectual than charity; it is a virtue of the head rather than of the heart; the proof of it is that charity and intolerance are often found together, forming an alliance rather than opposing each other. When tolerance is not philosophical and wholly reasoned, it takes on the aspect of a simple good-humour that greatly resembles moral weakness. Really to demonstrate the greatness of tolerance, one must put to the front the objective reasons drawn from the relativity of human knowledge and not the subjective reasons drawn from our own hearts.[53] Up to the present time tolerance has been founded on _respect_ for the person and the will of another: “It is necessary,” it is said, “for man to be free—free to deceive himself and to do evil, if need be;” and nothing is truer, but there is another source of tolerance which is more substantial and tends to gain ground more and more rapidly as dogmatic faith disappears.