In all customary societies bigotry is the ruling
principle. In rude places to this day any one who says anything new
is looked on with suspicion, and is persecuted by opinion if not
injured by penalty. One of the greatest pains to human nature is the
pain of a new idea. It is, as common people say, so 'upsetting;' it
makes you think that, after all, your favourite notions may be
wrong, your firmest beliefs ill-founded; it is certain that till now
there was no place allotted in your mind to the new and startling
inhabitant, and now that it has conquered an entrance you do not at
once see which of your old ideas it will or will not turn out, with
which of them it can he reconciled, and with which it is at
essential enmity. Naturally, therefore, common men hate a new idea,
and are disposed more or less to ill-treat the original man who
brings it. Even nations with long habits of discussion are
intolerant enough. In England, where there is on the whole probably
a freer discussion of a greater number of subjects than ever was
before in the world, we know how much power bigotry retains. But
discussion, to be successful, requires tolerance. It fails wherever,
as in a French political assembly, any one who hears anything which
he dislikes tries to howl it down.
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