But they did not. Henry said it was because he stood for the Union, but not against slavery, and looked upon emancipation as only a side issue, to be used for the sake of the Union. The others said still more uncomprehending things, and so forced me to tell them what I meant. I said Lincoln stood for a cause, for an idea, and not against any man. He wanted to win all to his side, to make his side the whole, the Union. Be for a cause, for a purpose, mean something, and strive for its fulfilment; but do not be against persons, against parties. After all, men can be won only if you are also for them, as Lincoln was also for the Southerners. He was willing to work with his political enemies for the Union, since he felt no enmity to men.
“No,” said Henry, “for his Secretary of State, Stanley, was his political enemy.”
The Red Cross nurses are not less at one with the purpose of their country, though they nurse and tend with equal kindness the wounded foe.
“Then,” Virginia went on, “Dickens is not a great artist in those parts of his books where he becomes bitter, and hates the characters of whom he writes?”
“No,” I answered, “surely not.”
“One feels that writer to be much greater,” she said, “who sympathizes with and understands and loves even his worst characters. And I think Dickens has not a good influence in those books where he arouses hatred of people, and does not help the feeling of sympathy.”
We spoke of political reforms—they are quite unformed and uninstructed in social thought—and then went on to school factions. Was it not true that they admired most the boy or girl who worked for a cause, without bitterness against any person? They spoke of class presidents and school parties, and discussed the thing among themselves. Ruth said that the best class president was always the one who had most enemies, for some girls liking her so much, many others were sure to dislike her.
I answered: “The person who stands for a purpose will have many against him, and he will not care. But he will not be against them. And in the end he will win, as Lincoln has won the Southerners. They may still be bitter against the North, but they join the Northerners in honoring Lincoln, the man, for they know he worked for them.
“You may have noticed that so far we have spoken of self-development and personal growth; and to you, at present, that is the most important thing. But I want to speak a few words of sympathy with those we do not know, of our relations with the world of all men.” I said they had too little experience to form definite ideas on that tremendous, complicated thing called society. I wanted to give them only a few of my ideas that might come back to them later, when they understood more.
I said: “I want you to think of society as a big self, as the rest of yourself, as one vast whole, in which each man in so many mysterious ways affects each other man, that none can be right until all are right. Have you ever thought of the relations of people with other people whom they never know, of all the things that are done for us by strangers?”