it was worse, because language is rarely as definite as
apprehension. Men rarely do their work to suit them, because their
tools are imperfect.

There are men in all communities who are believed to be honest,
yet whose word is never taken as authority upon any subject. There
is a flaw or a warp somewhere in their perceptions, which prevents
them from receiving truthful impressions. Every thing comes to
them distorted, as natural objects are distorted by reaching the
eye through wrinkled window-glass. Some are able to apprehend a
fact and state it correctly, if it have no direct relation to
themselves; but the moment their personality, or their personal
interest, is involved, the fact assumes false proportions and
false colors. I know a physician whose patients are always
alarmingly sick when he is first called to them. As they usually
get well, I am bound to believe that he is a good physician; but I
am not bound to believe that they are all as sick at beginning as
he supposes them to be. The first violent symptoms operate upon
his imagination and excite his fears, and his opinion as to the
degree of danger attaching to the diseases of his patients is not
worth half so much as that of any sensible old nurse. In fact,
nobody thinks of taking it all; and those who know him, and who
hear his sad representations of the condition of his patients,
show equal distrust of his word and faith in his skill, by taking
it for granted that they are in a fair way to get well.

It is impossible for bigots, for men of one idea, for fanatics,
for those who set boundaries to themselves in religious, social,
and political creeds, for men who think more of their own selfish
interests than they do of truth, and for vicious men, to speak the