Genius in Sunshine and Shadow Part 11

Curious beyond expression are the many-sided phases of genius, and indeed of all humanity. Let us therefore have a care how we judge our fellow-men, since what they truly are within themselves we cannot know, and may only infer by what they seem to be relatively to ourselves.

Undoubtedly the germs of virtue and of vice are born within the soul of every human being; their development is contingent upon how slight a cause! Nor in our readiness to censure should we forget in whose image we are all created,--"a little lower than the angels, a little higher than the brutes." It is the nature of man, like the harp, to give forth beautiful or discordant sounds according to the delicacy and skill with which it is touched. We find what we come to find,--what, indeed, we bring with us. Richard Baxter, the prolific author upon theology, at the close of a long life said: "I now see more good and more evil in all men than heretofore I did. I see that good men are not so good as I once thought they were; and I find that few are so bad as either malicious enemies or censorious professors do imagine."

THE END.