The first condition for judging clearly and soundly is the constant attention to our mental life, acknowledging to ourselves our own changes of mood, ceaselessly fighting the enemy within us.
From the altruistic point of view, we should picture to ourselves the person to be judged in the circumstances which have prompted his action—difficult though it be to perceive the differences between characters and shades of feeling—according to the numberless cases in which such action takes place. This is the reason why historians, in the act of composition, so often pass false judgments on the past. In their desire to make the characters live again, to call up vanished scenes, they become partisans, loving or hating those whom they have never known. Purely in deference to their own opinion, they fail in tolerance and indulgence. They do not estimate the worth of men of past days according to the moral tone of the epoch in which they lived; they judge of a society as a whole in the light of isolated documents, so that the men of vanished ages cut but a poor figure in their eyes to-day.
Now, the truth is that men are no greater now than in the other ages of the world. Removed from our own time by twenty-two centuries, the heroes of Plutarch remain as noble as our heroes of to-day; and in the domain of science, religion, and philosophy we have but changed names without changing at all in judgment and logic, without modifying the conditions of happiness or the outward signs of courage, and without developing the human “I.”
THE FEAR OF RIDICULE
The fear of ridicule is a terrible and powerful weapon in the eyes of many people. Cleverly handled by those who are slaves to custom and fashion, this fear of ridicule often prevents our obeying our true feelings, and leads us to act against our own interests.
Many persons whose social position is uncertain, or whose moral force is but little developed, have their days embittered by the thought of “what people will say.”
If these persons could only comprehend that nothing which is simple and sincere can be ridiculous, if vanity and amour-propre would permit them to understand that criticism is inevitable, that it increases self-confidence in well-balanced people, and in many cases helps us towards the end we wish to attain, they would not only cease to fear the observation of others, but no longer wish to suppress the personality of a neighbour.
They would say with Emerson: “That which I ought to do concerns my personality, and not what people think I ought to do.”