If any would avoid the disappointment of ignorance and the alarms of the foolish, let him learn to look with unamazed expectancy at what will appear on the ocean of Society. Do not look in men for the qualities you want to find, or for qualities you imagine they ought to have, but look with unexpectant eyes for what you can find. Do not expect perfection, but a few good points only, and be glad if you find them, and be tolerant of what is absent. Of him of this way of thinking it may be said, as was said of Charles Lamb: "He did not merely love his friends in spite of their errors, he loved them errors and all." Whoever remains under the delusion that nations and men possess only special qualities, and not all qualities in different stages of development, will hate them foolishly, praise them without reason, and will never know men. But whoever understands the trend of things in this ever-changing, uncontrollable world, where
"Our fate comes to us from afar,
Where others made us what we are,"
will utter the prayer of Sadi, the Persian poet: "O God! have pity on the wicked, for Thou hast done everything for the good in having made them good." A prayer worth remembering.
CHAPTER XLV. IDEAS FOR THE YOUNG
There are people who live many years and never grow old. We call them "young patriarchs." Limit not the golden dreams of youth, which, however, would be none the worse for a touch of the patriarch in them. There is sense in youth, and it will assimilate the experience of age if displayed before rather than thrust upon it. Youth should be incited to think for itself, and to select from the wisdom it finds in the world. Then the question comes—what is safe to take? That is the time for words of suggestion. Every one has read of the fox, who seeing a crow with a piece of cheese in her bill, told her "she had a splendid voice, and did herself an injustice by not singing." The credulous crow began a note, dropped the piece of cheese, with which the fox ran away. This trick is always being played. Among young persons there are a great number of crows. A youth is given a situation where advancement goes with assiduity. A fox-headed comrade or clerk below him tells him his "work is beneath his talents, and he ought to get something better." Discontent breeds negligence. He loses his place, when the treacherous prompter, whom he took to be his friend, slips into his situation, and finds it quite satisfactory.
In public affairs, in which youth seldom takes part, many are confused by pretences which they understand when too late. A person puts forward an excellent project, and finds it assailed and disparaged by some one he thought would support it. Discouraged by opposition, he comes to doubt the validity of the enterprise he had in hand. When he has abandoned it he finds it taken up by the very person who denounced it, and who claims credit for what he has opposed. All the while he has thought highly of the scheme, but wanted to have the credit of it himself, and therefore defamed it until he could get it into his own hands. This sort of thing is done in Parliament as well as in business. It is only by listening to the experience of others that youth can acquire wariness and guard against serious mistakes.
The young on entering life are often dismayed by dolorous speeches by persons who have never comprehended the nature of the world in which they find themselves. People are told "a great crisis in public affairs is at hand." There never was a time in the history of the world when a "crisis" was not at hand. Nature works by crises. Progress is made up of crises through which mankind has passed. Again there breaks forth upon the ears of inexperienced youth the alarming information that society is "in a transition state." Every critic, every preacher, every politician, is always saying this. Yet there never was a time when society was not in a "transition state." According to the Genesian legend, Adam discovered this in his day, when, a few weeks after his advent, he found himself outside the gates of Paradise, and all the world and all the creatures in it thrown into a state of unending perturbation and discomfort which has not ceased to this day. The eternal condition of human life is change, and he who is wise learns early to adapt himself to it. As Dr. Arnold said, there is nothing so dangerous as standing still when all the world is moving.
The young are bewildered by being left under the impression that they should learn everything. Whereas all they need is to know thoroughly what their line of duty in life requires them to know. No man can read all the books in the British Museum, were arrangements made for his sleeping there. No one is expected to eat all he finds in the market, but only so much as makes a reasonable meal. Lord Sherbrooke translated from the Greek guiding lines of Homer who said of a learner of his day:—
"He could not reap, he could not sow,
Nor was he wise at all:
For very many arts he knew,
But badly knew them all."