ng and rather disgraceful happiness of the monasteries came to an
end. Monks and nuns were forced to be up at sunrise, to study the Church
Fathers, to tend the sick and console the dying. The Holy Inquisition
watched day and night that no dangerous doctrines should be spread by
way of the printing press. Here it is customary to mention poor Galileo,
who was locked up because he had been a little too indiscreet in
explaining the heavens with his funny little telescope and had muttered
certain opinions about the behaviour of the planets which were entirely
opposed to the official views of the church. But in all fairness to the
Pope, the clergy and the Inquisition, it ought to be stated that the
Protestants were quite as much the enemies of science and medicine as
the Catholics and with equal manifestations of ignorance and intolerance
regarded the men who investigated things for themselves as the most
dangerous enemies of mankind.

And Calvin, the great French reformer and the tyrant (both political and
spiritual) of Geneva, not only assisted the French authorities when they
tried to hang Michael Servetus (the Spanish theologian and physician
who had become famous as the assistant of Vesalius, the first great
anatomist), but when Servetus had managed to escape from his French jail
and had fled to Geneva, Calvin threw this brilliant man into prison
and after a prolonged trial, allowed him to be burned at the stake on
account of his heresies, totally indifferent to his fame as a scientist.

And so it went. We have few reliable statistics upon the subject, but on
the whole, the Protestants tired of this game long before the Catholics,
and the greater part of honest men and women who were burned and hanged
and decapitated on account of their religious beliefs fell as victims of
the very energetic but also very drastic church of Rome.

For tolerance (and please remember this when you grow older), is of very
recent origin and even the people of our own so-called "modern world"
are apt to be tolerant only upon such matters as do not interest them
very much. They are tolerant towards a native of Africa, and do not care
whether he becomes a Buddhist or a Mohammedan, because neither Buddhism
nor Mohammedanism means anything to them. But when they hear that their
neighbour who was a Republican and believed in a high protective tariff,
has joined the Socialist party and now wants to repeal all tariff laws,
their tolerance ceases and