Chapter 11 10. Regarding general history books,

This book in particular I warmly recommend to anyone who has grown weary of modern fiction the Letters of Erasmus, the learned seeker who received many letters from more docile friends than himself, many of which contained banal warnings. Administrator X wrote: "I heard that you are thinking of writing a pamphlet on the Lutheran controversy. Please watch the fire, because you will easily anger the Pope, and the Pope wishes you to be safe." Or: "A certain gentleman just came back from Cambridge and he told me that you are preparing to publish a collection of essays. For God's sake, don't upset the emperor, who has power and influence, and will do you a lot of harm."

One moment Bishop Lufan, one moment the King of England, one moment the Sorbonne, another the dreaded professor of theology at Cambridge University, all sides must be considered carefully, otherwise the author will lose his income, lose his official protection, and fall into the Inquisition In the clutches of the torture wheel, he was smashed into pieces. Today, the wheel (except as a vehicle) has been relegated to the old antique museum.The Inquisition has been closed for nearly a hundred years, official protection is of no practical use to those devoted to literature, and the word "revenue" is not even mentioned in gatherings of historians.

Yet another form of warning and counsel flooded my isolated abode at the mention of my writing a History of Tolerance. "Harvard has denied Negroes access to dormitories," wrote one clerk. "Please be sure to mention this most deplorable event in your book." Or: "A Flamingo grocer's avowed conversion to the Roman Catholic Church has been boycotted by the Ku Klux Klan, and you're sure to have something to say about that when you're writing a story of tolerance." The list goes on and on. Needless to say, these situations are foolish and deserve serious reproach.They do not seem to be within the scope of writings on tolerance, however.They are just signs of bad manners and a lack of public decency.They differed greatly from the official form of intolerance, which was closely bound up with the laws of church and state, which made the persecution of a contented populace a sacred duty.

According to Bachhout, history should be like Rembrandt's etchings, which shed vivid light on the best and most important things, and leave the rest in the dark. Modern intolerance has had its outbursts like mad, and the newspapers have dutifully recorded it all, but even here we can see a promising future. Many things may be reasonable in the eyes of the predecessors, with the comment "it has always been like this", which should have been accepted as a matter of course, but today it will cause fierce debate.Often those who defend ideas which their parents and grandparents regarded as fanciful fantasies and of no practical use, have frequently waged war against the minds of the distasteful lower classes, with infrequent success. Not less.

The book must be kept short. The flattery of the thriving pawnbroker, the tarnished honor of the dominating Nordics, the ignorance of the outlying evangelists, the obstinacy of the peasant priests and the rabbinical rabbis of the Balkans, all of which I am overwhelmed with. Talked about.They haunt us all the time, they're nice people, but they're just bad minded. But as long as there is no official support, they are relatively harmless, and in enlightened countries the possibility of harm is completely eliminated. Personal intolerance is a nasty thing, and it causes greater unhappiness within the community than measles, smallpox, and gossiping women put together.But personal intolerance has no executioner.If the role of the executioner is allowed, as is sometimes the case in some countries, it goes beyond the limits of the law and really becomes the object of police attention.

There is no prison for individual intolerance, nor can it dictate for an entire nation what people must think, say, eat, and drink.If this is really done, it will inevitably lead to strong dissatisfaction among all decent people, and the new law will become a dead letter, which cannot be implemented even in the District of Columbia. In a word, personal intolerance can go no further than the majority of citizens of a free country would not mind.Not so with official intolerance, which can be powerful. It recognizes no authority but its own. Official intolerance can kill innocent people if it throws a fit of temper, and never does anything to repent.It does not listen to any justifications, but appeals to the "gods" to support its decisions, and justifies the will of the "Kingdom of Heaven" with plausible rhetoric, as if the idea of ​​unraveling the mystery of existence is unique to those who have just won the election.

Forgive me if this book repeatedly uses the word "intolerance" to mean "official intolerance," and if I say little about personal intolerance. I can only do one thing at a time.