Who are to be preferred, the nice people who are not religious, or the religious people (and there are really such) who are not (at least not always) nice? I am afraid this is the point where our view does not always coincide with God’s. (Luke v. 32.)
To do things on generous lines often seems, especially to the man still young, easier than to do things along the lines of duty. Well, then, do so at first. But when you can once do the one, then you must learn to do the other also, else your life remains beautiful—but incomplete.
The visitation of sins unto the third and fourth generation may be regarded from this point of view: that for so long a period God is yet laboring with these generations. The worst that can happen to men is not this visitation, but that God may leave them henceforth quite to their own way and will. For the wicked, visitation is, therefore, always a tender of amnesty, but lasting good fortune means rejection.
A temperament always equable, somewhat cool but not selfish, and sympathetic and friendly to every one, is perhaps the happiest if one wishes to be generally liked. Such men pass for especially amiable people and are universally esteemed, without their often contributing anything important and solid to the advance of the world. There are actually people, therefore, who assume this manner from policy. But whether these amiable people have not, after all, buried their talent, is another question.
That intercourse with men which is the art of life is necessarily based, if it is to be brought under rational rules at all, upon a correct knowledge of men. For whoever voluntarily seeks the companionship of men whom he knows to be bad or false is, with all his knowledge of human nature, a fool and a suicide besides. In this point we have departed widely from the conceptions of our grandfathers; human intercourse has to-day become much less sentimental and much more serious than a hundred years ago. In this matter the ever-recurring question whether the men are by nature good or bad is beside the mark. As a matter of fact, men have the disposition to be both, and it is our concern, therefore, as Paul says, not to be overcome of the evil we can not avoid meeting, but to overcome evil with good.
If one does not always keep this before his eyes as a fundamental rule of life, then all intercourse with the bad and weak (which is never to be wholly evaded) will be, for men of the better sort, an evil that may lead at last to a contempt for humanity and a desire for isolation, or else to an indifference toward all true principles. Here, also, there are a number of maxims taught by experience, whose observation will make one’s intercourse with men at least more easy. They are as follows:
One gets into the best relations with men, on the whole, if he feels a simple, natural, sincere friendliness toward every one he meets, in much the same manner as unspoiled children do before they have experienced the meanness of men. This manner, after many painful experiences, can be again acquired,—at least at a certain period in later life which may then be called, in this good sense, a second childhood. When one has this attitude, it may even happen that he treats evil men as if good, as they could be if they would, and as, in their better moments, they would really like to be. And the result is that these men forget their evil nature for a time and feel better and happier. That, and not “the destruction of the wicked,” is a true man’s greatest victory in this world.
At the same time it must not be forgotten that one should not put too great stress upon a man’s behavior at the moment; for every one can tell from his own experience how easily our moods alter, and how changeable and uncertain our judgments of others are, so long as the heart has not yet become constant in kindness.
All lasting human relationships rest upon reciprocity. We must never be willing only to receive, nor must we ever be willing only to give; that always ends in dissatisfaction.