The second condition of tolerance implies deeper thought on the disputed subject than does the first. It relates to things, about which we are not indifferent; but it indicates a mental sophistication which is too cautious lightly to put Q. E. D. at the close of a demonstration. Our conviction has, as it were, a string to it. I read once in a novel a phrase like this: "He was as amazed as a Christian, who, waking after death, should look round the universe and find that there was no God." Imagination gives us tolerance by marring every faith with the suggestion that we may wake up and find ourselves mistaken. And this is just the faith that cannot remove mountains. The idea that the other fellow may be right, paralyzes activity. Only bigots and fanatics set fire to the world without scruple. We sit before the hearth, perhaps, and argue about the brutality and cowardice of much of our current morality, and the obstacles which convention often raises against a sincere and heroic life; and yet, unspoken behind our preaching, is the haunting fear that the wisdom of the ages may not be the hoary folly it seems, that the melodramatic novels may be true, that considerations unguessed may be involved--and we continue to sit before the hearth.
The presence of the little imp of skeptical imagination marks the difference between philosophical and religious convictions. For good or ill, the other person's point of view, once seen, cannot cease for us. Our most ardent idealism is not a belief for which we would willingly be martyred by the realists: for we might wake and look round the universe in vain for an Absolute. It may be a good thing that the quality of religious conviction has died out among us, or it may be a necessary evil of civilized thinking. But the fact remains that we have no need of tolerance towards views which, consciously or unconsciously, we admit may be more nearly true than our own. We are merely not sure enough of ourselves to risk annihilating the views of our opponents.
The third form of imperfect conviction on which tolerance may rest is the view of truth as purely personal or relative. Subjectivism has been used as a bad name in philosophy for so long that the suspicion of it is usually resented. But it peers out from behind the respectable robe of many a philosophy which has not learned to call hard names. To reduce truth to a fact in individual experience, is to destroy the problem. Genuine conviction, without which tolerance is a mere form devoid of substance, is impossible if the truth for me and the truth for you are isolated facts, having and needing no relation to each other. But little private truths are sufficient only for little private affairs.