poor personal habits of other people to absorb and quite use up
all our fine indignation? It will be a bad day for society when
sentimentalists are encouraged to suggest all the measures that
shall be taken for the betterment of the race. I, for one,
sometimes sigh for the generation of "leading people" and of good
people who shall see things steadily and see them whole; who
shall show a handsome justness and a large sanity of view, an
opportune tolerance for details, that happen to be awry, in order
that they may spend their energy, not without self-possession, in
some generous mission which shall make right principles shine
upon the people's life. They would bring with them an age of
large moralities, a spacious time, a day of vision.

Knowledge has come into the world in vain if it is not to
emancipate those who may have it from narrowness, censoriousness,
fussiness, an intemperate zeal for petty things. It would be a
most pleasant, a truly humane world, would we but open our ears
with a more generous welcome to the clear voices that ring in
those writings upon life and affairs which mankind has chosen to
keep. Not many splenetic books, not many intemperate, not many
bigoted, have kept men's confidence; and the mind that is
impatient, or intolerant, or hoodwinked, or shut in to a petty
view shall have no part in carrying men forward to a true
humanity, shall never stand as examples of the true humankind.
What is truly human has always upon it the broad light of what is
genial, fit to support life, cordial, and of a catholic spirit of
helpfulness. Your true human being has eyes and keeps his balance
in the world; deems nothing uninteresting that comes from life;
clarifies his vision and gives health to his eyes by using them
upon things near and things far. The brute beast has but a single