JACQUES MARITAIN
211
worked out for that group according to its own principles." This is
impermissible to those who are concerned with men's souls and
who know that they know
the
truth about the only path by which
these souls may be saved. The pluralist form of political organiza–
tion "Signifies that in order to avoid greater evil ... the common–
wealth could and should tolerate (to tolerate is not approve) ways
of worship more or less distant from the truth...." These greater
evils are civil strife and the insecurities it breeds. Tolerance of
non·Catholics and heretical Catholics in M. Maritain's secular
9Jristian state is an evil, a
lesser
evil but an evil nevertheless.
It
is a lesser evil which is suffered by the true believers until they
become strong enough to save the false believers from themselves
without danger of provoking widespread civil strife. The measure
of the strength of the integral humanists, we must therefore con–
clude, is the limit of the tolerance of integral humanism. Salvation
is always a greater good than tolerance. Civil war is always a
greater evil than tolerance.
If
repression could stop short of civil
war, it would be a lesser evil than tolerance.
How faithfully M. Maritain follows official Church doctrine
on this point, despite his gracious prose and terminological liberal·
ism, may be gathered from the following passage in the Papal
Encyclical,
Libertas,
of Leo XIII. "Although in the extraordinary
conditions of these times the Church usually acquiesces in certain
modern liberties, she does so not as preferring them in themselves,
but as judging it expedient to allow them until in happier times she
can exercise her own liberty." Among the liberties of the church
are not merely the right to teach her doctrines as alone true but the
right to judge and punish.
The basic feature of M. Maritain's secular Christian state is
that it cannot be neutral in religion. Insofar as public education
is concerned, not only must provision be made for religious instruc–
tion, with due regard for the extra-territorial rights of heretical
religions, but any teaching that falls within the very broad category
of atheism must be proscribed in order to save the souls of the
young from corruption. M. Maritain is much too civilized a per–
son to join in a man-hunt against atheistic professors of philosophy
like Bertrand Russell. But he has formulated the theoretical prem–
ises which can be used to justify the tightest restrictions against a
