ounds
suffered in that conflict, they are better than the barren peace of
death that follows when all the combatants are slaughtered or bound hand
and foot.

The difficulty at present is that though this necessity for Toleration
is a law of political science as well established as the law of
gravitation, our rulers are never taught political science: on the
contrary, they are taught in school that the master tolerates nothing
that is disagreeable to him; that ruling is simply being master; and
that the master's method is the method of violent punishment. And our
citizens, all school taught, are walking in the same darkness. As I
write these lines the Home Secretary is explaining that a man who has
been imprisoned for blasphemy must not be released because his remarks
were painful to the feelings of his pious fellow townsmen. Now it
happens that this very Home Secretary has driven many thousands of his
fellow citizens almost beside themselves by the crudity of his notions
of government, and his simple inability to understand why he should
not use and make laws to torment and subdue people who do not happen
to agree with him. In a word, he is not a politician, but a grown-up
schoolboy who has at last got a cane in his hand. And as all the rest of
us are in the same condition (except as to command of the cane) the only
objection made to his proceedings takes the shape of clamorous demands
that _he_ should be caned instead of being allowed to cane other people.

The Sin of Athanasius

It seems hopeless. Anarchists are tempted to preach a violent and
implacable resistance to all law as the only remedy; and the result of
that speedily is that people welcome any tyranny that will rescue them
from chaos. But there is really no need to choose between anarchy and
tyranny. A quite reasonable state of things is practicable if we proceed
on human assumptions and not on academic ones. If adults will frankly
give up their claim to know better than children what the purposes
of the Life Force are, and treat the child as an experiment like
themselves, and possibly a more successful one, and at the same time
relinquish their monstrous parental claims to personal private property
in children, the rest must be left to common sense. It is our attitude,
our religion, that is wrong. A good beginning might be made by enacting
that any person dictating a piece of conduct to a child or to anyone
else as the will of God, or as absolutely