The mind has no more difficulty in tracking the real within
the innumerable than in apprehending infinite possibility. 00 may issue
from 0, or may return to it.
January 19, 1879.--Charity--goodness--places a voluntary curb on
acuteness of perception; it screens and softens the rays of a too vivid
insight; it refuses to see too clearly the ugliness and misery of the
great intellectual hospital around it. True goodness is loth to
recognize any privilege in itself; it prefers to be humble and
charitable; it tries not to see what stares it in the face--that is to
say, the imperfections, infirmities, and errors of humankind; its pity
puts on airs of approval and encouragement. It triumphs over its own
repulsions that it may help and raise.
It has often been remarked that Vinet praised weak things. If so, it was
not from any failure in his own critical sense; it was from charity.
"Quench not the smoking flax,"--to which I add, "Never give unnecessary
pain." The cricket is not the nightingale; why tell him so? Throw
yourself into the mind of the cricket--the process is newer and more
ingenious; and it is what charity commands.
Intellect is aristocratic, charity is democratic. In a democracy the
general equality of pretensions, combined with the inequality of merits,
creates considerable practical difficulty; some get out of it by making
their prudence a muzzle on their frankness; others, by using kindness as
a corrective of perspicacity.
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