It Takes Two To Speak The Truth, - One
To Speak, And Another To Hear.
How can one treat with
magnanimity mere wood and stone?
If we dealt only with the false
and dishonest, we should at last forget how to speak truth. Only
lovers know the value and magnanimity of truth, while traders
prize a cheap honesty, and neighbors and acquaintance a cheap
civility. In our daily intercourse with men, our nobler
faculties are dormant and suffered to rust. None will pay us the
compliment to expect nobleness from us. Though we have gold to
give, they demand only copper. We ask our neighbor to suffer
himself to be dealt with truly, sincerely, nobly; but he answers
no by his deafness. He does not even hear this prayer. He says
practically, I will be content if you treat me as "no better than
I should be," as deceitful, mean, dishonest, and selfish. For
the most part, we are contented so to deal and to be dealt with,
and we do not think that for the mass of men there is any truer
and nobler relation possible. A man may have _good_ neighbors,
so called, and acquaintances, and even companions, wife, parents,
brothers, sisters, children, who meet himself and one another on
this ground only. The State does not demand justice of its
members, but thinks that it succeeds very well with the least
degree of it, hardly more than rogues practise; and so do the
neighborhood and the family. What is commonly called Friendship
even is only a little more honor among rogues.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 284 of 422
Words from 78657 to 78919
of 116321
