instituted public massacres in the Capital of France, in the midst of a
population shuddering with fright, but who let things go? Now the
characteristic of indifference is the letting things go. If fanaticism
has something to do with persecution, indifference has a great deal to
do with it. The crimes which minds paralyzed by doubt allow to be
perpetrated have besides a sadder character than those which are
perpetrated by passions, which, wild and erring though they be, have a
certain nobleness in their origin. If I must be bound to the stake, I
had rather burn with the blind assent of a fanatical crowd, than in the
presence of an indifferent populace who came to look on. For just as
sceptics find all doctrines equally good, so they find all spectacles
equally instructive and curious.[35]

I have felt it necessary to insist on these considerations. Direct
attacks upon religious truth are perhaps less dangerous than the efforts
by which modern infidelity endeavors to estrange us from God, by
persuading us that doubt is the guarantee of liberty, and that belief
rivets the chains of bondage. Many consciences are disturbed by these
affirmations. It concerns us therefore to know that God is the great
Liberator of souls, and that forgetfulness of God is the road to
slavery. The faith which seeks to propagate itself by force inflicts
upon itself the harshest of contradictions. The spirit of doubt, in
order to become the spirit of violence, has only to transform itself
according to the laws of its proper nature.

And now to sum up. One of the noblest spectacles that earth can show,
is that of a community animated with a true and profound faith, in which
each man, using his best efforts to communicate his convictions to his
brethren, respects the while that which belongs to God in the inviolable
asylum of the conscience of others. But woe to the society formed by