History, chary of revealing her secrets, has thus far taught us one great lesson.
What the hand of man has done, the hand of man can also undo.
It is a question of courage, and next to courage, of education.
That of course sounds like a platitude. For the last hundred years we have had “education” driven into our ears until we are sick and tired of the word and look longingly back to a time when people could neither read nor write but used their surplus intellectual energy for occasional moments of independent thinking.
But when I here speak of “education” I do not mean the mere accumulation of facts which is regarded as the necessary mental ballast of our modern children. Rather, I have in mind that true understanding of the present which is born out of a charitable and generous knowledge of the past.
In this book I have tried to prove that intolerance is merely a manifestation of the protective instinct of the herd.
A group of wolves is intolerant of the wolf that is different (be it through weakness or strength) from the rest of the pack and invariably tries to get rid of this offending and unwelcome companion.
A tribe of cannibals is intolerant of the individual who by his idiosyncrasies threatens to provoke the wrath of the Gods and bring disaster upon the whole village and brutally relegates him or her to the wilderness.