How then has this great change of social organisation been effected? To put this question is to approach an immense subject, the history of liberty and toleration. I can only make one or two brief remarks. It has been suggested by many authors, notably by Kidd in his volume on Western Civilisation, that we owe this great change to the Christian religion. It is pointed out that the Christian religion, unlike most earlier religions, was from the first not a national or State religion but a universal religion, and that its adoption has weakened the tyranny of the State by breaking up its alliance with religion. Further, it is a religion which, by its doctrine of the immortality of the souls of all men, has tended to give dignity and value to each individual life, quite independently of personal status. Again, by its teaching of universal charity, it has to some extent softened and moralised the relations of men and of societies. But, that the replacement of a national religion by a universal religion which teaches the equality of all believers does not suffice to secure continued collective evolution is shown by the instances of Bhuddism and Mohammedanism. Both of these are of this character, yet both have failed to render continuously progressive the societies that have accepted them.
That the spread of the Christian religion does not in itself suffice to account for the evolution from the ancient to the modern type of social organisation is shown also by the fact that it had held undisputed sway among the peoples of Western Europe for more than a thousand years before social evolution made any considerable advance. Throughout that period, religion constantly called in the civil and military power of the State to enforce the acceptance of its dogmas. And that its teachings did not suffice to produce religious or civil tolerance is shown by the fierce and incessant persecutions of heretics and the many religious wars that fill the history of medieval Europe.
The religious tolerance and liberty of the modern era are rather features of a wider phenomenon, the general increase of tolerance and liberty, and they must be ascribed to the same causes as this wider fact. They imply a great evolution of the moral tradition, the most important and striking feature of which is the expansion of the sphere in which the sympathetic feelings find application. There is no reason to suppose that the feelings and emotions underlying the sympathetic and considerate treatment of others have changed in character in the historic period. For long ages men have felt such sympathy and given considerate and just treatment to those who have been nearest to them; at first to the members of their own immediate family; later to the fellow-members of their own small society; and then, as societies expanded into complex caste societies, to the members of their own caste; later, as castes were broken down, to all their fellow citizens; and still later in some degree to all men.
It is this progressive extension of the sphere of imaginative sympathy which, more than anything else, has broken down all the social barriers that confined the energies of men and has set free their various faculties in that competition of ever increasing severity which is the principal cause underlying the modern progress of peoples. It is this which has destroyed nearly all the old bonds that fettered and limited men’s activities in religion, in science, in politics, in art, in commerce, in manufacture, and has brought men in all these spheres into that intense, because free and equal, competition, which produces an ever accelerating progress. It is this which has produced the almost universal acceptance of the entirely and most characteristically modern principle of ‘one man one vote,’ a principle so hard to justify on any ground of expediency, from any considerations of the stability and welfare of the State. It is this also which has led to so greatly increased intercourse between peoples.
It is sometimes contended that the realisation of the principles of equality and justice for all men has been secured only by the strife of the social classes, by the success of the lower classes in forcing a series of concessions from the ruling classes. This is a very imperfect and partial view of the process. If the ruling classes had consistently sought to maintain their power and exclusive privileges, and to maintain all the rest of society in a state of servitude or serfdom, there is little doubt that they could have done so. But their position has been weakened from within by the extension of their sympathies. Consider the great series of legislative changes which, during the nineteenth century, transformed the social organisation of this country, especially the factory laws, the franchise extension laws, and the laws for the abolition of slavery. These were for the most part of the nature of a voluntary abdication of power on the part of the classes in possession. Consider the topics which chiefly engross the attention of our legislators and are the centre of political and social discussion. They are the providing of a better and freer education for the children of the working classes, who of themselves would probably never have thought of such a thing; the providing of free meals for school children; the providing of work and food for the unemployed; temperance laws, land settlement, and emigration, the eight-hours day, housing of the working classes, free trade and cheap food, old age pensions; all measures for raising the standard of life of the labouring classes and securing them against the tyranny of capital.
In respect of our relations to the lower peoples the same proposition holds good. It would be easy for the European nations to exterminate the black people of Africa, and to possess themselves of all their lands[152]. But public opinion will not now allow this; it insists upon our moral obligation towards such peoples, that we are bound to try to help them to survive and to raise themselves to our level of culture.
The extension of the sphere of application of imaginative sympathy has then been a factor of prime importance in producing the social evolution which underlies modern progress.
The factors that have brought about this extension have been many and complex, and it is perhaps a hopeless task to attempt to enumerate them and to apportion to each its share of influence. Undoubtedly, it has been produced largely by the influence of a relatively small number of enlightened leaders of opinion, such men as Wilberforce, Stuart Mill, Shaftesbury, John Locke, Rousseau, and Voltaire—men whose original intellectual powers enabled them to criticise and reject the settled principles of their time. It was a work of liberation from custom and traditional prejudice effected by the spirit of inquiry, which questioned the validity of the old narrow conceptions of the relations of men and peoples, the old narrow prejudices of caste and nation, and discovered their fallacies to the world; discovered, for example, that men of a religious persuasion slightly different from one’s own are not necessarily wicked, nor those of a different nationality necessarily despicable and possessed of no ideas worthy of admiration and adoption.
But the ground was prepared for the reception of the teachings of such men by the conflicts of men who desired nothing of tolerance and equality and liberty. This is best illustrated by the history of religious toleration. As I said before, religion is essentially conservative and intolerant of heresies. The first effect on religion of that revival and liberation of the spirit of inquiry which we call the Renascence, was to produce not religious toleration, but rather a bitter conflict of mutually intolerant sects. And religious toleration was eventually achieved largely by the realisation of the necessity of compromise among these warring and constantly multiplying sects; it was found impossible to weed out heresy by persecution. Yet who can doubt that the Church, if it believed that it saw its way to secure the universal acceptance of its doctrines by means of persecution, would long hesitate to return to its ancient practices? The coming of religious toleration was due to the application of the spirit of inquiry to religious systems; these inquiries produced irreconcilable sects, whose strife prepared the way for compromise and toleration.
The strife of parties and sects was itself part of a still wider process; and this process must be recognised as the most important single condition of that widening of the sphere of imaginative sympathy which has been the root cause of the improvement of social organisation, of the general increase of liberty, and thus of the progress of the modern nations. This wider process is the general increase of human intercourse, both within nations and between them. Only so long as men know little of one another, can they continue to regard one another with entire hostility or cold indifference. The knowledge and understanding brought by personal intercourse is necessary to sympathy; but as soon as, and in proportion as, such knowledge is acquired, the innate social tendencies common to all men are brought into play. As soon as man understands that his fellow man suffers the same pains and joys as himself, longs for the same goods, fears the same evils, throbs with the same emotions and desires, then he shares with him in some degree these feelings, in virtue of that fundamental law of all social beings, the law of primitive sympathy; then also pity and sympathetic sorrow and tender regard are awakened in his breast; then his fellow man is no longer the object of his cold or hostile glances, as a certain rival and probable enemy, but is seen to be a fellow toiler and sufferer whom he is willing to succour, a fellow creature whose joys and sorrows alike he cannot but share in some degree.