The father of Frederick the Great, a vulgarian with the manners of a coal-heaver and the personal tastes of a bartender, could grow quite tender when he was called upon to meet a delegation of foreign fugitives. “The more the merrier,” was his motto in all matters pertaining to the vital statistics of his kingdom and he collected the disinherited of all nations as carefully as he collected the six-foot-three grenadiers of his lifeguard. His son was of a very different caliber, a highly civilized human being who, having been forbidden by his father to study Latin and French, had made a speciality of both languages and greatly preferred the prose of Montaigne to the poetry of Luther and the wisdom of Epictetus of that of the Minor Prophets. The Old Testament severity of his father (who ordered the boy’s best friend to be decapitated in front of his window so as to teach him a lesson in obedience) had not inclined his heart toward those Judaean ideals of rectitude of which the Lutheran and Calvinist ministers of his day were apt to speak with such great praise. He came to regard all religion as a survival of prehistoric fear and ignorance, a mood of subservience carefully encouraged by a small class of clever and unscrupulous fellows who knew how to make good use of their own pre-eminent position by living pleasantly at the expense of their neighbors. He was interested in Christianity and even more so in the person of Christ himself, but he approached the subject by way of Locke and Socinius and as a result he was, in religious matters at least, a very broad minded person, and could truly boast that in his country “every one could find salvation after his own fashion.” This clever saying he made the basis for all his further experiments along the line of Tolerance. For example, he decreed that all religions were good as long as those who professed them were upright people who led decent, law-abiding lives; that therefore all creeds must enjoy equal rights and the state must never interfere in religious questions, but must content herself with playing policeman and keeping the peace between the different denominations. And because he truly believed this, he asked nothing of his subjects except that they be obedient and faithful and leave the final judgment of their thoughts and deeds “to Him alone who knew the conscience of men” and of whom he (the King) did not venture to form so small an opinion as to believe him to be in need of that human assistance which imagines that it can further the divine purpose by the exercise of violence and cruelty.