The tenderness of tolerance will illuminate and glorify the world,—as moonlight makes all things beautiful,—if we only permit it. Measuring a man by his weakness alone is unjust. This little frailty may be but a small mortgage on a large estate, and it is narrow and petty to judge by the mortgage on a character. Let us consider the "equity," the excess of the real value over the claim against it.
Unless we sympathetically seek to discover the motive behind the act, to see the circumstances that inspired a course of living, the target at which a man is aiming, our snap condemnations are but arrogant and egotistic expressions of our intolerance. All things must be studied relatively instead of absolutely. The hour hand on a clock does just as valuable work as the minute hand, even though it is shorter and seems to do only one-twelfth as much.
Intolerance in the home circle shows itself in overdiscipline, in an atmosphere of severity heavy with prohibitions. The home becomes a place strewn with "Please keep off the grass" signs. It means the suppression of individuality, the breaking of the wills of children, instead of their development and direction. It is the foolish attempt to mould them from the outside, as a potter does clay; the higher conception is the wise training that helps the child to help himself in his own growth. Parents often forget their own youth; they do not sympathize with their children in their need of pleasure, of dress, of companionship. There should be a few absolutely firm rules on essentials, the basic principles of living, with the largest possible leeway for the varying manifestations of individuality in unimportant phases. Confidence, sympathy, love and trust would generate a spirit of tolerance and sweetness that would work marvels. Intolerance converts live, natural children into prigs of counterfeit virtue and irritatingly good automatons of obedience.
Tolerance is a state of mutual concessions. In the family life there should be this constant reciprocity of independence, this mutual forbearance. It is the instinctive recognition of the sacredness of individuality, the right of each to live his own life as best he can. When we set ourselves up as dictators to tyrannize over the thoughts, words and acts of others, we are sacrificing the kingly power of influence with which we may help others, for the petty triumph of tyranny which repels and loses them.
Perhaps one reason why the sons of great and good men so often go astray is that the earnestness, strength and virtue of the father, exacting strict obedience to the letter of the law, kills the appreciation of the spirit of it, breeding an intolerance that forces submission under which the fire of protest and rebellion is smouldering, ready to burst into flame at the first breath of freedom. Between brother and sister, husband and wife, parent and child, master and servant, the spirit of tolerance, of "making allowances," transforms a house of gloom and harshness into a home of sweetness and love.
In the sacred relation of parent to child there always comes a time when the boy becomes a man, when she whom the father still regards but as a little girl faces the great problems of life as an individual. The coming of years of discretion brings a day when the parents must surrender their powers of trusteeship, when the individual enters upon his heritage of freedom and responsibility. Parents have still the right and privilege of counsel and of helpful, loving insight their children should respect. But in meeting a great question, when the son or daughter stands before a problem that means happiness or misery for a lifetime, it must be for him or for her to decide. Coercion, bribery, undue influence, threats of disinheritance, and the other familiar weapons, are cruel, selfish, arrogant and unjust. A child is a human being, free to make his own life, not a slave. There is a clearly marked dead-line that it is intolerance to cross.
Let us realize that tolerance is ever broadening; it develops sympathy, weakens worry and inspires calmness. It is but charity and optimism, it is Christianity as a living eternal fact, not a mere theory. Let us be tolerant of the weakness of others, sternly intolerant of our own. Let us seek to forgive and forget the faults of others, losing sight, to a degree, of what they are in the thought of what they may become. Let us fill their souls with the inspiring revelation of their possibilities in the majestic evolution march of humanity. Let us see, for ourselves and for them, in the acorn of their present the towering oak of their future.
We should realize the right of every human soul to work out its own destiny, with our aid, our sympathy, our inspiration, if we are thus privileged to help him to live his life; but it is intolerance to try to live it for him. He sits alone on the throne of his individuality; he must reign alone, and at the close of his rule must give his own account to the God of the ages of the deeds of his kingship. Life is a dignified privilege, a glorious prerogative of every man, and it is arrogant intolerance that touches the sacred ark with the hand of unkind condemnation.