drifts into "it
is highly conjectural and indeed extremely unlikely," or something of
that sort. Tolerance was once an instrument for ensuring that truth
should not be suppressed; it is now an excuse for refusing to bother.
There is, in fact, a growing disrespect for truth. A great many men went
to the stake years ago rather than admit the possibility that they were
wrong; they protested, so far as human endurance allowed them to
protest, that they were orthodox and that their persecutors, and not
they, were the heretics. To-day a bunch of Cambridge men calls itself
"The Heretics" and imagines it has found a clever title. At the same
time there is an apparent decline in the power to believe. The average
politician (the principal type of twentieth-century propagandist)
hardly ever makes a speech which does not contain one at least of the
following phrases:

"I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that . . ."

"We are all subject to correction, but as far as
we know . . ."

"In this necessarily imperfect world . . ."

"So far as one is able to judge . . ."

"Appearances are notoriously deceptive, but . . ."

"Human experience is necessarily limited to . . ."

"We can never be really sure . . ."

"Pilate asked, 'What is truth?' Ah, my brethren,
what indeed?"

"The best minds of the country have failed to come
to an agreement on this question; one can only
surmise . . ."

"Art is long and life is short. Art to-day is even
longer than it used to be."

Now the politician, to do him justice, has retained the courage of his
convictions to a greater extent than the orthodox believer in God. Men
are still prepared to make Home Rule the occasion of bloodshed, or to
spend the midnight hours denouncing apparent political heresies. But
whereas the politician, like the orthodox believer once pronounced
apologetics, they now merely utter apologies. To-day, equipped as never
before with the heavy artillery of argument in the shape of Higher
Criticism, research, blue-books, statistics, cheap publications, free
libraries, accessible information, public lectures, and goodness only
knows what else, the fighting forces of the spiritual and temporal
decencies lie drowsing as in a club-room, placarded "Religion and
politics must not be discussed here."

All this, with the exception