Human nature is worth knowing and worth loving, and it can never be
known or loved without open sympathy.
Why, we ourselves are human nature!
Many of us would be glad to give sympathy to others, especially in
little ways, but we do not know how to go to work about it; we seem
always to be doing the wrong thing, when our desire is to do the
right. This comes, of course, from the same inability to take the
other's point of view; and the ability is gained as we are quiet and
watch for it.
Practice, here as in everything else, is what helps. And the object
is well worth working for.
IX.
OTHERS.
HOW to live at peace with others is a problem which, if practically
solved, would relieve the nervous system of a great weight, and give
to living a lightness and ease that might for a time seem weirdly
unnatural. It would certainly decrease the income of the
nerve-specialists to the extent of depriving those gentlemen of many
luxuries they now enjoy.
Peace does not mean an outside civility with an inside dislike or
annoyance. In that case, the repressed antagonism not only increases
the brain-impression and wears upon the nervous system, but it is
sure to manifest itself some time, in one form or another; and the
longer it is repressed, the worse will be the effect.
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