Character and Conduct Part 28

_Amiel's Journal._

"Of all human faculties there is none which more enriches our lives than a sound moral judgment. Genius is rarer and more wonderful. But this surpa.s.ses even genius in the fact that it is not only in itself a virtue, but the fruitful mother of virtues. It is as Aristotle said, 'Given a sound judgment and all the virtues will follow in its train.'

"If the moral judgment is to be sound it must presuppose character, faculty to deliberate, and enlightenment."

_The Making of Character_, Professor MACCUNN.

Sound Judgment

JUNE 22

"That is a penetrating sarcasm of George Eliot's in 'Amos Barton': 'It is so much easier to say that a thing is black, than to discriminate the particular shade of brown, blue, or green to which it really belongs. It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is good for nothing, than to enter into all the circ.u.mstances that would oblige you to modify that opinion.' Everybody needs the suggestion that is embodied in the above remark. Our judgments of men are always more or less defective. But it is the man who prides himself on his outspokenness, the man who thinks it would be cowardice to withhold an opinion of men and things, particularly if he is charged with the duty of public utterance, that needs to learn that blue or brown or green is not black, and that in nothing is so much discrimination needed as in the diagnosis of character."

"Never does a man portray his own character more vividly than in his manner of portraying another."

RICHTER.

Sound Judgment

JUNE 23

"It hardly can seem strange that excellence in judgment is thus rare if we go on to think of the manifold discipline that it needs.

"For we cannot deny that even physical conditions tend at least to tell on it; and most of us may have to own that there are days on which we know that we had better distrust the view we take of things. It is good counsel that a man should, if he has the chance, reconsider after his holiday any important decision that he was inclined to make just before it; that he should appeal from his tired to his refreshed self; and men need to deal strictly with the body, and to bring it into subjection, not only lest its appet.i.tes grow riotous, but also lest it trouble, with moods and miseries of its own, the exercise of judgment.

"And then, with the calmness of sound health, or the control that a strong and vigilant will can sometimes gain over the encroachments of health that is not sound, there must also be the insight and resourcefulness of learning; that power to recognise, and weigh, and measure, and forecast, which comes of long watching how things move; the power that grows by constant thoughtfulness in study or in life; the distinctive ability of those who, in Hooker's phrase, are 'diligent observers of circ.u.mstances, the loose regard whereof is the nurse of vulgar folly.'"

_Studies in the Christian Character_, Bishop PAGET.

Harsh Judgment

JUNE 24

"How often we judge unjustly when we judge harshly. The fret and temper we despise may have its rise in the agony of some great unsuspected self-sacrifice, or in the endurance of unavowed, almost intolerable pain. Whoso judges harshly is sure to judge amiss."

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.

"We meet and mingle, we mark men's speech; We judge by a word or a fancied slight; We give our fellows a mere glance each, Then brand them for ever black or white.

"Meanwhile G.o.d's patience is o'er us all, He probes for motives, He waits for years; No moment with Him is mean or small, And His scales are turned by the weight of tears."

Judging

JUNE 25

"Perhaps it were better for most of us to complain less of being misunderstood, and to take more care that we do not misunderstand other people. It ought to give us pause at a time to remember that each one has a stock of cut-and-dry judgments on his neighbours, and that the chances are that most of them are quite erroneous. What our neighbour really is we may never know, but we may be pretty certain that he is not what we have imagined, and that many things we have thought of him are quite beside the mark. What he does we have seen, but we have no idea what may have been his thoughts and intentions. The mere surface of his character may be exposed, but of the complexity within we have not the faintest idea. People crammed with self-consciousness and self-conceit are often praised as humble, while shy and reserved people are judged to be proud. Some whose whole life is one subtle studied selfishness get the name of self-sacrifice, and other silent heroic souls are condemned for want of humanity."

_The Potter's Wheel_, Dr. JOHN WATSON.

"To weigh other minds by our own is the false scale by which the greater number of us miscalculate all human actions and most human characters."

JOHN OLIVER HOBBES.

Bia.s.sed Judgments

JUNE 26

"How difficult it is to submit anything to the opinion of another person without perverting his judgment by the way in which we put the matter to him. If one says, 'For my part I think it beautiful,' or 'I think it obscure,' or the like, one inclines the hearer's imagination to that opinion, or incites it to take the contrary view."

PASCAL.

"Human speech conveys different meanings to differently bia.s.sed minds."

_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.

"We judge of others by what we see in them: and, what is more perilous still, we are tempted to judge of ourselves by what others can see in us."

Bishop WESTCOTT.

Judging

JUNE 27

"The sinner's own fault? So it was.

If every own fault found us out, Dogged us and hedged us round about, What comfort should we take because Not half our due we thus wrung out?

"Clearly his own fault. Yet I think My fault in part, who did not pray But lagged and would not lead the way.

I, haply, proved his missing link.

G.o.d help us both to mind and pray."

CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.

"She had the clear judicial mind which must inevitably see the tragic pitifulness of things. She had thought too much to be able to indulge in the primitive luxury of unqualified condemnation."

_In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim_,