"
We have, however, to be on our guard against impatient scorn. The
best people are apt to have their impatient side; and often, the
very temper which makes men earnest, makes them also intolerant.
(10) "Of all mental gifts," says Miss Julia Wedgwood, "the rarest
is intellectual patience; and the last lesson of culture is to
believe in difficulties which are invisible to ourselves."
The best corrective of intolerance in disposition, is increase of
wisdom and enlarged experience of life. Cultivated good sense
will usually save men from the entanglements in which moral
impatience is apt to involve them; good sense consisting chiefly
in that temper of mind which enables its possessor to deal with
the practical affairs of life with justice, judgment, discretion,
and charity. Hence men of culture and experience are invariably,
found the most forbearant and tolerant, as ignorant and
narrowminded persons are found the most unforgiving and
intolerant. Men of large and generous natures, in proportion to
their practical wisdom, are disposed to make allowance for the
defects and disadvantages of others--allowance for the
controlling power of circumstances in the formation of character,
and the limited power of resistance of weak and fallible natures
to temptation and error. "I see no fault committed," said Goethe,
"which I also might not have committed." So a wise and good man
exclaimed, when he saw a criminal drawn on his hurdle to Tyburn:
"There goes Jonathan Bradford--but for the grace of God!"
Life will always be, to a great extent, what we ourselves make it.
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