Even in the midst of the most idiotic outbreaks of the modern spirit of intolerance which are so faithfully chronicled in our news sheets, it is possible to discern signs of a more hopeful future. For nowadays many things which previous generations would have accepted as self-evident and which would have been passed by with the remark that “it has always been that way,” are cause for serious debate. Quite often our neighbors rush to the defense of ideas which would have been regarded as preposterously visionary and unpractical by our fathers and our grandfathers and not infrequently they are successful in their warfare upon some particularly obnoxious demonstration of the mob spirit. This book must be kept very short. I can’t bother about the private snobbishness of successful pawn-brokers, the somewhat frayed glory of Nordic supremacy, the dark ignorance of backwoods evangelists, the bigotry of peasant priests or Balkan rabbis. These good people and their bad ideas have always been with us. But as long as they do not enjoy the official support of the State, they are comparatively harmless and in most civilized countries, such a possibility is entirely precluded. Private intolerance is a nuisance which can cause more discomfort in any given community than the combined efforts of measles, small-pox and a gossiping woman. But private intolerance does not possess executioners of its own. If, as sometimes happens in this and other countries, it assumes the rôle of the hangman, it places itself outside the law and becomes a proper subject for police supervision. Private intolerance does not dispose of jails and cannot prescribe to an entire nation what it shall think and say and eat and drink. If it tries to do this, it creates such a terrific resentment among all decent folk, that the new ordinance becomes a dead letter and cannot be carried out even in the District of Columbia. In short, private intolerance can go only as far as the indifference of the majority of the citizens of a free country will allow it to go, and no further. Whereas official intolerance is practically almighty. It recognizes no authority beyond its own power. It provides no mode of redress for the innocent victims of its meddlesome fury. It will listen to no argument. And ever again it backs up its decisions by an appeal to the Divine Being and then undertakes to explain the will of Heaven as if the key to the mysteries of existence were an exclusive possession of those who had been successful at the most recent elections. If in this book the word intolerance is invariably used in the sense of official intolerance, and if I pay little attention to the private variety, have patience with me. I can only do one thing at a time. CHAPTER XI RENAISSANCE There is a learned cartoonist in our land who takes pleasure in asking himself, what do billiard-balls and cross-word puzzles and bull-fiddles and boiled shirts and door-mats think of this world?