H G Wells

Mankind in the Making H G Wells

Toleration to-day is becoming a different thing from the toleration of former times. Thetoleration of the past consisted very largely in saying, "You are utterly wrong and totally accurst, there is no truth but my truth and that you deny, but it is not my place to destroy you and so I letyou go." Nowadays there is a real disposition to accept the qualified nature of one's privatecertainties. One may have arrived at very definite views, one may have come to beliefs quite bindingupon one's self, without supposing them to be imperative upon other people. To write "I believe" isnot only less presumptuous and aggressive in such matters than to write "it is true," but it is alsonearer the reality of the case. One knows what seems true to one's self, but we are coming to realizethat the world is great and complex, beyond the utmost power of such minds as ours. Every day oflife drives that conviction further home. And it is possible to maintain that in perhaps quite a greatnumber of ethical, social, and political questions there is no absolute "truth" at all-at least for finitebeings. To one intellectual temperament things may have a moral tint and aspect, differing widelyfrom that they present to another; and yet each may be in its own way right. The wide differences incharacter and quality between one human being and another may quite conceivably involve not onlydifferences in moral obligation, but differences in fundamental moral aspect-we may act and reactupon each other towards a universal end, but without any universally applicable rule of conductwhatever. In some greater vision than mine, my right and wrong may be no more than hammer andanvil in the accomplishment of a design larger than I can understand. So that these papers are notwritten primarily for all, nor with the same intention towards all who read them. They are designedfirst for those who are predisposed for their reception. Then they are intended to display in anorderly manner a point of view, and how things look from that point of view, to those who are notso predisposed. These latter will either develop into adherents as they read, or, what is more likely, they will exchange a vague disorderly objection for a clearly defined and understood difference. Toarrive at such an understanding is often for practical purposes as good as unanimity; for innarrowing down the issue to some central point or principle, we develop just how far those who aredivergent may go together before separation or conflict become inevitable, and save something ofour time and of our lives from those misunderstandings, and those secondary differences of nopractical importance whatever, which make such disastrous waste of human energ