Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/147

Rh But of what worth, you may ask, is this moral sanction of a majority? I am not myself greatly enamoured of majority rule in the sense of a majority exercising compulsion on a minority. Compulsion by a majority I should often think it a duty to resist. But to the testimony of a majority that refrained from compulsion I should attach the greatest possible weight. There you would get a public opinion which by its own self-restraint and scrupulous moderation of conduct would be of the highest moral value. For Society fearlessly to admit the full and open advocacy of that which it disapproves is the finest proof I can imagine of its moral stability, and of its faith in the social principles it lives by.

Broadly speaking—with the exception I have already referred to—that view is now admitted in matters of religion; you may hold and you may advocate what religious principles you like. But you are not so free to hold and advocate social and ethical principles. The veto of Society has shifted, and you are far less likely to incur opprobrium and ostracism to-day if you advocate polytheism than if you advocate polygamy or pacifism. And the reason for this, I take to be, that the religion of modern Society is no longer doctrinal but ethical; and so our tendency is to inhibit new ethical teaching though we would not for a moment countenance the inhibition of new doctrinal teaching.

That is our temptation, and I think that in the coming decade there will be a great fight