Thus he comes to believe that the expression can only take one form, and that this form is essential to the thing expressed. The symbol becomes to him the keystone of the social fabric. Such a thing cannot be a subject either for discussion or experiment. Its existence is an indubitable premiss from which all reasoning must start. Children must be taught that doubt of its existence is as insane as disbelief in the existence of an external world. A Socrates who attempts to reason on such matters must be treated as a dangerous lunatic, if not as a fiendish criminal. Much more then is a heretic who actually attacks that by which all must stand or fall, to be treated as an anarchist and an enemy of the human race.
Those who, like the late Dr Creighton, wish entirely to dissociate toleration from scepticism, use very plausible arguments to prove (1) that persecution is entirely a thing of the past; (2) that the religious toleration of our own times is in no way connected with indifference.
Let us first deal with Dr Creighton's own view as expressed in his Hulsean lectures (1893-4). Of medieval persecution, with which he chiefly concerns himself, he writes: "The infliction of punishment for erroneous opinions was adopted by the church . . . when the church accepted the responsibility of maintaining order in the community, and disappeared when society became
