And intolerance among the many other vices inherent in an autocratic form of government was for good and all to be eradicated from this fair earth. Allons, enfants de la patrie, the days of tyranny are gone! And more words to that effect. Then the curtain went down, society was purged of its many iniquities, the cards were re-shuffled for a new deal and when it was all over, behold our old friend Intolerance, wearing a pair of proletarian pantaloons and his hair brushed à la Robespierre, a-sitting side by side with the public prosecutor and having the time of his wicked old life. Ten years ago he had sent people to the scaffold for claiming that authority maintaining itself solely by the grace of Heaven might sometimes be in error. Now he hustled them to their doom for insisting that the will of the people need not always and invariably be the will of God. A ghastly joke! But a joke paid for (after the nature of such popular fancies) with the blood of a million innocent bystanders. What I am about to say is unfortunately not very original. One can find the same idea couched in different if more elegant words in the works of many of the ancients. In matters pertaining to man’s inner life there are, and apparently there always have been, and most likely there always will be two entirely different varieties of human beings. A few, by dint of endless study and contemplation and the serious searching of their immortal souls will be able to arrive at certain temperate philosophical conclusions which will place them above and beyond the common worries of mankind. But the vast majority of the people are not contented with a mild diet of spiritual “light wines.” They want something with a kick to it, something that burns on the tongue, that hurts the gullet, that will make them sit up and take notice. What that “something” is does not matter very much, provided it comes up to the above-mentioned specifications and is served in a direct and simple fashion and in unlimited quantities. This fact seems to have been little understood by historians and this has led to many and serious disappointments. No sooner has an outraged populace torn down the stronghold of the past (a fact duly and enthusiastically reported by the local Herodoti and Taciti), than it turns mason, carts the ruins of the former citadel to another part of the city and there remolds them into a new dungeon, every whit as vile and tyrannical as the old one and used for the same purpose of repression and terror. The very moment a number of proud nations have at last succeeded in throwing off the yoke imposed upon them by an “infallible man” they accept the dictates of an “infallible book.” Yea, on the very day when Authority, disguised as a flunkey, is madly galloping to the frontier, Liberty enters the deserted palace, puts on the discarded royal raiment and forthwith commits herself to those selfsame blunders and cruelties which have just driven her predecessor into exile.