This source is distrust of human thought and conscience, which are not free not to deceive themselves, and to which every article of absolute _faith_ must necessarily be also an article of error. So that, at the present day, tolerance is no longer a virtue, but simply an affair of the intelligence; the further one goes, the more one sees that one does not in the least understand; the more one sees that the beliefs of one’s neighbour are a complement to one’s own, that no one of us can be right alone, to the exclusion of all others. By the mere development of the intelligence which makes us aware of the infinite variety of the world and the impossibility of any one solution of eternal problems, each individual opinion comes to have a value in our eyes: it is nothing more nor less than a bit of evidence bearing on the theory of the universe, and it goes without the saying that no one item of evidence can be made the basis of a definitive judgment, a dogmatic conclusion, without appeal. [53] See A. Fouillée, _Systèmes de morale contemporains_. _II. Broad dogmatic faith._ [Sidenote: Conflict between intelligence and dogmatism.] “The aim of most men,” as an English writer says, “is to pass through life with as little expenditure of thought as possible:” but what is to become of those who think, and of intellectual men in general? Even without suspecting it, one will ultimately allow an interpretation more or less broad of the texts to which one has seemed to cling in a narrow and _literal_ faith. There is almost no such thing as a perfectly orthodox believer. Heresy enters by one door or another, and strange to say it is that precise fact that keeps traditional faith alive in face of the progress of science. An absolute and immutably literal faith would be too offensive to last long. Orthodoxy either kills the nations in which it entirely stifles freedom of thought or it kills faith in itself. Intelligence can never stand still; it is a light that moves, like that cast by the sun on the dripping oars as the boat is being lustily rowed along. [Sidenote: Dogmatism doubly irrational.]