In addressing persons of inferior station, do not be prone to suppose that there is much occasion for intellectual condescension on your part: at any rate do not be careless in what you say, as if any thing would do for them. Observe the almost infinite fleetness of your own powers of thought, and then consider whether it is likely that education has much to do with this. Use simple language, but do not fear to put substance in it: choose, if you like, common materials, but make the best structure that you can of them: and be assured that method and
logical order are not thrown away upon any one. The rudest audience, as well as the most refined, soon grows weary, I suspect, of protracted, driftless, tautology.
Do not dwell more than you can help, upon the differences of nature between yourself and those with whom you live. Consider whether your own vanity is not too requiring. See that others have not the same complaint to make of your uncongeniality, that you are, perhaps, prone to make of theirs. If you are, indeed, superior, reckon it as your constant duty, to try and sympathize with those beneath you; to mix with their pursuits, as far as you can, and thus, insensibly, to elevate them. Perhaps there is no mind that will not yield some return for your labour: it seems the dullest, bleakest, rock, not earth enough to feed a nettle; yet up grows, with culture, the majestic pine.
A want of sympathy leads to the greatest ignorance in the intellect as well as in the heart.
Remember that your dependents have seldom
a full power of replying to you; and let the recollection of that make you especially considerate in your dealings with them.
When you find a lack of truth in those about you, consider whether it may not arise from the furiousness of your own temper which scares truth away from you: and reflect how fearful a part the angry man may have in the sin of those falsehoods which immoderate fear of him gives rise to. Such, I am afraid, is the tyrannous nature of the human heart that we not only show, but really feel, more anger at offence given us by those under our power, than at any other cause whatever.
It is a mistake to suppose that we necessarily become indifferent to the faults and foibles of those with whom we live: on the contrary, we sometimes grow more and more alive to them: they seem, as it were, to create a corresponding soreness in ourselves: and, knowing that they exist in the character, we are apt to fancy that we perceive them even
on occasions when they are not in the least brought into play.
Do not be fond of the display of authority, or think that there is anything grand in being obeyed with abject fear. One certainly meets with persons who are vain of their ill-temper, and of seeing how it keeps the people about them in order; a species of vanity which they might share with any wild animal at large.