Stop on the dizzy verge of mistaking an excessive and painstaking courtesy for a genuine and heartfelt interest. It should rather put you on your guard.
Stop short of the old-time cynicism of regarding every man as a rascal until he shall have afforded proofs to the contrary. Such a wholesale distrust of human nature is creditable to neither the head nor the heart.
Stop before sweepingly condemning a discreditable action the temptations to which are outside your own experience. Even to “put yourself in his place” is not always available for the formation of intelligent criticism in such cases.
Stop before lightly assigning reasons for another’s domestic troubles. The closet-skeleton is a strictly local spectre that is not the less terrible by reason of the narrowness of its haunting powers.
Stop short of disparaging the charity that methodizes and calculates its smallest alms. There is an enlightened self-interest that relieves more real distress than all the off-handed gratuities that are bestowed.
Stop before impugning self-seeking motives to a good deed that redounds to the doer’s advantage. Even if partly premeditated to this end, the result, if humanitarian in its general influence, is not the less useful and noble.
Stop before judging a man solely by his errors or misfortunes. The former may have been circumstantially unavoidable, as the latter may have been undeserved.
Stop before adopting the stereotyped, canting “I-might-have-told-you-so” criticism in the case of a friend who has fallen. The helping hand is then in order, if ever at all; and he is doubtless aware of the cause of his disgrace, without your telling him.
