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which anyone could fall victim; the second in the beneficent connection
between toleration and trade, which soon became evident to many ob–
servers of social life. Yet not only virtues and natural dispositions con–
tributed to neutralizing intolerance and building toleration; various vices
could also serve the aim. For instance, hypocrisy, one of those undoubt–
edly and often condemned human frailties, nevertheless could be useful.
Voltaire's treatise gives us a telling anecdote about a Dominican and a
Jesuit who had fiercely quarrelled:
The mandarin being informed of this scandalous behavior ordered
them both to be sent to prison. A submandarin asked His Excellence
how long he would please to have them remain in confinement. Until
they are both agreed, said the judge. Then, my lord, answered the
submandarin, they will remain in prison all their days. W ell, then, said
the mandarin, Let them stay until they forgive one another. That they
will never do rejoined the deputy; I know th em very well. Indeed,
said the mandarin; then let it be until th ey appear to do so.
The scope given to the concept of toleration in the classics is intrigu–
ing. Is there anything specific in toleration that distinguishes it from other
apparently related but far more tangible notions and phenomena like
kindness or disinterestedness? What will be left of toleration if we deprive
it of tact and justice, of love and meekness, of charity and good manners,
of knowledge and curiosity, of instincts for self-interest and self-preserva–
tion, of hypocrisy and other private vices which are public virtures? If we
possess most of these qualities, is it necessary to invoke the concept of
toleration? What would be gained?
One plausible answer is that toleration, whatever its precise meaning,
is attached to all these virtues, vices, instincts, and habits. Without them,
or in opposition to them, or abstracted from them and treated separately
as an autonomous quality, toleration is empty and meaningless. Possibly,
there is nothing conceptually faulty with insistently relating toleration to
other practices of moral behavior; pure toleration, distilled of all related
notions, may be dubious and - if separated from related practices - even
harmful. Advocating toleration without love, justice, rule oflaw, self-in–
terest, hypocrisy, and so on may be like advocating courage without the
training of character, at best an arid exercise in philosophical speculation
and at worst a form of subversion aimed at the most vital and widely
shared values of social life. Therefore, such "pure" toleration might well
bring results hardly compatible with the ordinary sense of the concept. A
tolerant individual could thus be either someone who lives peacefully
with his philosophical and religious adversaries, or someone who antago-
