ABSTRACT
Toleration is an indeterminate and many-faceted concept, sometimes an aspirational ideal, aptly dubbed an "elusive virtue". Toleration can be virtuous, but only insofar as it is a prudential political mechanism for the avoidance or resolution of social conflict—cooperation and not confrontation—which is to say it should be a pragmatic but principled political and moral third way. The Bible exhorts us to "love thy neighbour as thyself," and toleration has been encouraged by adages such as "turn a blind eye or the other cheek" and "live and let live." The incoherence of toleration as a moral ideal is that it could be seen as being contradictory; inasmuch that what is apparently accepted is actually rejected or is irreconcilable with a genuine conviction. It is axiomatic that there is rarely genuinely complete and limitless toleration in human relationships. The limits of toleration towards different or non-conformist groups become tighter whenever a group is seen as having "too much influence," too many benefits.
