ith these men. I
plead that we should agree with them at least in having an abstract
belief. But I know that there are current in the modern world many
vague objections to having an abstract belief, and I feel that we shall
not get any further until we have dealt with some of them. The first
objection is easily stated.

A common hesitation in our day touching the use of extreme convictions
is a sort of notion that extreme convictions specially upon cosmic
matters, have been responsible in the past for the thing which is
called bigotry. But a very small amount of direct experience will
dissipate this view. In real life the people who are most bigoted are
the people who have no convictions at all. The economists of the
Manchester school who disagree with Socialism take Socialism seriously.
It is the young man in Bond Street, who does not know what socialism
means much less whether he agrees with it, who is quite certain that
these socialist fellows are making a fuss about nothing. The man who
understands the Calvinist philosophy enough to agree with it must
understand the Catholic philosophy in order to disagree with it. It is
the vague modern who is not at all certain what is right who is most
certain that Dante was wrong. The serious opponent of the Latin Church
in history, even in the act of showing that it produced great infamies,
must know that it produced great saints. It is the hard-headed
stockbroker, who knows no history and believes no religion, who is,
nevertheless, perfectly convinced that all these priests are knaves.
The Salvationist at the Marble Arch may be bigoted, but he is not too
bigoted to yearn from a common human kinship after the dandy on church
parade. But the dandy on church parade is so bigoted that he does not
in the least yearn after the Salvationist at the Marble Arch. Bigotry
may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions. It is
the resistance offered to definite ideas by that vague bulk of people
whose ideas are indefinite to excess. Bigotry may be called the
appalling frenzy of the indifferent. This frenzy of the indifferent is
in truth a terrible thing; it has made all monstrous and widely
pervading persecutions. In this degree it was not the people who cared
who ever persecuted; the people who cared were not sufficiently
numerous. It was the people who did not care who filled the world with
fire and oppression. It was the hands of the indifferent that lit the
faggo