The Unsung Virtue Of Tolerance - 1941

July, 1941 – E. M. FORSTER, English Journalist and Commentator

This excerpt from "The Unsung Virtue of Tolerance", an essay delivered as a radio address by E. M. Forster in July 1941, addresses the essential psychological foundation required for post-war societal reconstruction. Forster argues that while many believe love is the necessary spiritual quality for rebuilding civilization, this emotional force is impractical and has consistently failed in public affairs, instead advocating for the duller but more realistic virtue of tolerance. Tolerance is defined as merely "putting up with people" whom one dislikes or does not know, a negative virtue that is nonetheless imperative for allowing different races, classes, and interests to coexist in an increasingly crowded world. The author contends that this commonsense approach is the only viable foundation for a civilized future, recognizing that even democracy's strength lies in its willingness to tolerate others rather than seek their extermination. Ultimately, Forster posits that tolerance is a necessary "makeshift" that must precede any possible eventual societal love.

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The original speech text is provided below:

The Unsung Virtue of Tolerance

IT IS VERY EASY TO SEE FANATICISM IN OTHER PEOPLE

By E. M. FORSTER, English Journalist and Commentator

Delivered over radio of British Broadcasting System, July, 1941

EVERYBODY today is talking about reconstruction.

Our enemies have their schemes for a new order in

Europe, maintained by their secret police, and we on

our side talk of rebuilding London or England, or western

civilisation, and we make plans how this is to be done-five-

year plans, or seven-year, or twenty-year. Which is all very

well, but when I hear such talk, and see the architects sharp-

ening their pencils and the contractors getting out their esti-

mates, and the statesmen marking out their spheres of in-

fluence, and everyone getting down to the job, as it is called,

a very famous text occurs to me: "Except the Lord build the

house they labour in vain who build it." Beneath the poetic

imagery of these words lies a hard scientific truth, namely,

unless you have a sound attitude of mind, a right psychology,

you cannot construct or reconstruct anything that will

endure. The text is true, not only for religious people, but

for workers whatever their outlook, and it is significant that

one of our historians, Dr. Arnold Toynbee, should have

chosen it to preface his great study of the growth and decay

of civilisations.

We shall probably agree on this point; surely the only

sound foundation for a civilisation is a sound state of mind.

Architects, contractors, international commissioners, market-

ing boards, broadcasting corporations will never, by them-

selves, build a new world. They must be inspired by the

proper spirit, and there must be the proper spirit in the

people for whom they are working. For instance, we shall

never have a beautiful new London until people refuse to

live in ugly houses. At present, they don't mind; they de-

mand comfort, but are indifferent to civic beauty; indeed

they have no taste. I live myself in a hideous block of flats,

but I can't say it worries me, and until we are worried, all

schemes for reconstructing London beautifully must auto-

matically fail.

But about the general future of civilisation we are all

worried. We want to do something about it, and we agree

that the basic problem is psychological, that the Lord must

build if the work is to stand, that there must be a sound

state of mind before diplomacy or economics or trade-confer-

ences can function. What state of mind is sound? Here we

may differ. Most people, when asked what spiritual quality

is needed to rebuild civilization, will reply "Love". Men

must love one another, they say; nations must do likewise,

and then the series of cataclysms which is threatening to

destroy us will be checked.

Respectfully but firmly, I disagree. Love is a great force

in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things: but love

in public affairs simply does not work. It has been tried

again and again: by the Christian civilisations of the Middle

Ages, and also by the French Revolution, a secular move-

ment which reasserted the Brotherhood of Man. And it has

always failed. The idea that nations should love one another,

or that business concerns or marketing boards should love

one another, or that a man in Portugal, say, should love a

man in Peru of whom he has never heard-it is absurd, it is

unreal, worse, it is dangerous. It leads us into perilous and

vague sentimentalism. "Love is what is needed," we chant,

and then sit back and the world goes on as before. The

fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we

cannot know much. In public affairs, in the rebuilding of

civilisation, something much less dramatic and emotional is

needed, namely, tolerance. Tolerance is a very dull virtue.

It is boring. Unlike love, it has always had a bad press. It

is negative. It merely means putting up with people, being

able to stand things. No one has ever written an ode to

tolerance, or raised a statue to her. Yet this is the quality

which will be most needed after the war. This is the sound

state of mind which we are looking for. This is the only

force which will enable different races and classes and inter-

ests to settle down together to the work of reconstruction.

The world is very full of people—appallingly full; it has

never been so full before-and they are all tumbling over

each other. Most of these people one doesn't know and some

of them one doesn't like; doesn't like the colour of their

skins, say, or the shapes of their noses, or the way they blow

them or don't blow them, or the way they talk, or their smell

or their clothes, or their fondness for jazz or their dislike of

jazz, and so on. Well, what is one to do? There are two

solutions. One of them is the Nazi solution. If you don't

like people, kill them, banish them, segregate them, and then

strut up and down proclaiming that you are the salt of the

earth. The other way is much less thrilling, but it is on the

whole the way of the democracies, and I prefer it. If you

don't like people, put up with them as well as you can. Don't

try to love them; you can't, you'll only strain yourself. But

try to tolerate them. On the basis of that tolerance a civilised

future may be built. Certainly I can see no other foundation

for the post-war world.

For what it will most need is the negative virtues: not

being huffy, touchy, irritable, revengeful. I have no more

faith in positive militant ideals; they can so seldom be carried

out without thousands of human beings getting maimed or

imprisoned. Phrases like "I will purge this nation," "I will

clean up this city," terrify and disgust me. They might not

have mattered so much when the world was emptier: they

are horrifying now, when one nation is mixed up with

another, when one city cannot be organically separated from

its neighbours. And, another point: reconstruction is unlikely

to be rapid. I do not believe that we are psychologically fit

for it, plan the architects never so wisely. In the long run,

yes, perhaps the history of our race justifies that hope. But

civilisation has its mysterious regressions, and it seems to me

that we are fated now to be in one of them, and must recog-

nise this and behave accordingly. Tolerance, I believe, will

be imperative after the establishment of peace. It's always

useful to take a concrete instance: and I have been asking

myself how I should behave if, after peace was signed, I met

Germans who had been fighting against us. I shouldn't try

to love them: I shouldn't feel inclined. They have broken a

window in my little ugly flat for one thing, and they have

done other things which I need not specify. But I shall try

to tolerate them, because it is commonsense, because in the

post-war world we shall have to live with Germans. We

can't exterminate them, any more than they have succeeded

in exterminating the Jews. We shall have to put up with

them, not for any lofty reason, but because it is the next

thing that will have to be done.

I don't then regard Tolerance as a great eternally estab-

lished divine principle, though I might perhaps quote "In

My Father's House are many mansions" in support of such

a view. It is just a makeshift, suitable for an overcrowded

and overheated planet. It carries on when love gives out,

and love generally gives out as soon as we move away from

our home and our friends-and stand in a queue for potatoes.

Tolerance is wanted in the queue; otherwise we think, "Why

will people be so slow?"; it is wanted in the tube, "Why

will people be so fat?"; it is wanted at the telephone, or we

say "Why are they so deaf?" or conversely, "Why do they

mumble?" It is wanted in the street, in the office, at the

factory, and it is wanted above all between classes, races, and

nations. It's dull. And yet it entails imagination. For you

have all the time to be putting yourself in someone else's

place. Which is a desirable spiritual exercise.

I was saying that Tolerance has a bad press. This ceaseless

effort to put up with other people seems tame, almost ignoble,

so that it sometimes repels generous natures, and I don't

recall many great men who have recommended it. St. Paul

certainly didn't. Nor did Dante. However, a few names

occur to me, and I will give them, to lend some authority to

what I say. Going back over two thousand years, and to

India, there is the great Buddhist Emperor Asoka, who set

up inscriptions all over India, recording not his own exploits

but the need for mercy and mutual understanding and peace.

Going back about four hundred years, to Holland, there is

the Dutch scholar Erasmus, who stood apart from the re-

ligious fanaticism of the Reformation and was abused by

both parties, Catholic and Lutheran, in consequence. In the

same century there was the Frenchman, Montaigne, subtle,

intelligent, witty, who lived in his quiet country house and

wrote essays which still delight the civilised. And England,

too: there was John Locke, the philosopher; there was Sydney

Smith, the Liberal and liberalising divine; there was a man

who recently died, Lowes Dickinson, writer of a little book

called A Modern Symposium, which might be called the

Bible of Tolerance. And Germany, too-yes, Germany:

there was Goethe. All these men testify to the creed which I

have been trying to express: a negative creed, but very neces-

sary for the salvation of this crowded jostling modern world.

Two more remarks, and I have done. The first is that it's

very easy to see fanaticism in other people, but difficult to

spot in oneself. Take the evil of racial prejudice. We can

easily detect it in the Nazis; their conduct has been infamous

ever since they rose to power. But we ourselves are we

quite guiltless? We are far less guilty than they are? Yet

is there no racial prejudice in the British Empire? Is there

no colour question? I ask you to consider that, those of you

to whom Tolerance is more than a pious word. My other

remark is to forestall a criticism. Tolerance is not the same

as weakness. Putting up with people does not mean giving in

to them. This complicates the problem. But the rebuilding

of civilisation is bound to be complicated. I only feel certain

that unless the Lord builds the House, they will labour in

vain who build it. Perhaps, when the house is completed,

love will enter it, and the greatest force in our private lives

will also rule in public life.