Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1926-03-02
NEW BOOKS
AT RANDOM
I. G.. NJ.

TOLERANCE. Hendrix William Van
Loon. Boni & Liveright.
Let's read Tolerance" backward.
the last chapter first. 1t seems to me
that much of all booked learning
might to advantage be read ana
studied in this order. Certainly IN
respect to history, to the recorded
past in it's various aspects, there ap-
pears to be but one adequate way OF
coming to any sort of understanding
with it. And that is by way of the
present. For the present is our sole
domain. Here our real concerns lie.
Here our 'keenest interest operates.
Here function such interpreting
powers as only experience itself can
afford to use. A live and leaping in
te"eSt is the basic condition of human
activity, the seed of human growth.
Now a really energiZing interest
springs primarily from our immediate
contacts. 1t is this contactual firing
that step by step fuses the past with
the present Illuminating for us through
such identification the long march Of
man from his beginnings up to the
moment of our own part in the gen
eraI progression. From the near to
the remote. From the known, little
by little outward toward the relatively
unknown. This is the fundamental
law in the processes of education. 1t
is, in effect, the only law. The rest
is merely device, plan, method, prof.
ect. Some day, maybe, the writing
of books devoted to education will rec
ognize the prime advantage of this
order Of approach. Not only history,
but literature, science, economics,
whatnot, would come alive, produc-
ingly alive, under such immediacy of
appeal. However, all that is some
thing else, except
X x y X
As a case in point, let's read 'Toler-
ance' backward. Here at the last
chapter we, in the company Of the
author. stand looking around upon
q familiar and interesting present
that appears TO be characterized by
a spirit of general tolerance. A pres
ent wherein every man is free to
think his own thoughts without legal
bar or ban from the outside. Par
ticularly in that old battlefield of the
world, religion, one is nowadays free
to choose, or even not to choose. To
be sure, only the day before yesterday
an old New England law, sleeping
for 200 years, woke up to charge q
man with the crime Of blaspheny.
And but yesterday out in Indiana a
teacher was brought by his church to
the bar of Judgment for the heinous
offense of providing for his pupils
such dangerous and perverting recrea-
lions as tennis, basket ball, base ball
and the like. These, however, are
but rare and harmless sparks from
the old fires that burned witches and
other as clearly bedeviled mortals
Religion is today, upon the whole,
free from the concerted bigOtry and
intolerance of its long past.
While the spirit of intolerance has
to an appreciate and blessed degree
departed from religion. it has not. how
ever, quite passed off from the face of
the earth. Looking around upon this
present, that fact stands clear and
undeniable. For, spread before us
there IS a race intolerance, cruel and
therefore wicked Here. too, are
cruelties practiCed by man upon man
within the same raCe-struggles for
advantage at any cost in labor and
trade, In politics and business Here
are, besides, a thousand social intol.
erances, bitter as death despite their
rootage in mere malice and pettiness.
\ 4 X X
Set back bit by this showing, we
asked, and is this, after all, an age
Of tolerance" Are we any better
in this respect than we used TO be-
than man has ever BEEN" And Van
Loon said: Come on with me. Let
us go back to see" And here began
that backward movement to find out,
first. what the past 80 years. or 100,
have yielded toward the broadening
Of mans spirit by way of better under
standings, toward a larger tolerance
which. in the present. gives fair prom
Use to even greater expansions and in
illusions.
In the between whites Of threading
this back trail the author traces in
tolerance 10 it's true and single
source, fear. A fear, this, that is a
part of mans instinct toward self
protection, his chief warrant of self
continuance. Nature, in the subtIest
of arts, in the most specious of ilIu-
sions, has. under her own urge for
continuance, enlisted man to a blind
but passionate cooperation. 1t is
upon this primal instinct that mans
fears have built the hatredS and in
toleranceS and prosecutions that, up to
the present moment. have OVershad-
owed his progress, that will in a slow
ly diminishing degree still continue
to overshadOw il.
Events, institutions and men stand
out along this trail. Chiefly men.
since men are the material Of which
events are made, institutions are men
raised to their ultimate powers. The
Revolution, the Reformation, the In
QUESTION are waymarks along this
road of no tolerance. In between ap-
pear men, this man and that one
protesting. teaching, preaching, argu-
ing against this abuse, or for that
freedom and amelioratfon in the gen
orally bitter tide of life. Among these
men, the one historically nearest to
the present Is Tom Paine, the dirty
little atheist" according TO the pro
nouncement Of one Of our Presidents
not so long ago-vet. a valiant sol
der in the cause of that freedom Of
thought, that liberty Of the mind,
which we now so highly prize and for
whose even greater privileges the
warfare IS still going on. Among
these men, too, in a receding retrospect
are Leasing and Noltaire. and Spinoza.
MOntaigne and Rabelais and Eras-
mus-each protestant in his own
way, each in accordance with his M.
ture an apostle for latitude of thol1pht
for liberty Of the mind. And so the
story moves backward to the greatest
of all tyrannies, that of Ignorance
tyranny that even yet exercises a
tremendous power and is in large part
accountable for the pendulum swing
of advance and retreat that. since
time began, has marked the course
of mans slow progress out of the
darkness of fear and hatred and big
Otry.
x * * 4
And now we leave this backward
trail, so Illuminating because so rela-
lively near at its every point. for
quick forward movement, as swiftly
achieved as the leafing of the book
itself. Now we stand again at the