The Essays of an Optimist

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1871. Excerpt: ... ON TOLERATION. SOME years ago, under the same good auspices, I wrote an essay On Growing Old. Since that time I have grown old; and I have been thinking what I have gained by it. Perhaps the sum-total is much; perhaps little. I am not now going to inquire. I would merely discourse upon one of my gains. I trust that I may use the first person plural and say thaf it is great gain that as We grow older We grow more tolerant. We are less frequently disappointed, --we are less querulous and censorious, --because we have dropped some of the egotism of our youth, and have ceased to look for the same manifestations from others as we know to be habitual in ourselves. And it is not only that with advancing age we come to understand more clearly that the same inward qualities or feelings speak out from different persons after different outward fashions, just as different men go by different roads to the same bourn, or do the same business in different ways, but that we learn how to take account of the influence of circumstances in moulding character and shaping conduct, and are more gentle and moderate in our judgments. I can remember that, when I was young, I sat in a sort of bloody assize not only upon the doings but on the characters of my neighbors; and I pursued with a remorseless egotism all who happened to differ from me in action, in opinion, or in sentiment. I may be worse in many other respects, but in this I trust that I am better; and I would fain hope that many old or elderly people have profited in like manner by the attrition of years. I am afraid, nevertheless, that there is still a large amount of intolerance in the world, even among those who have lived long enough to be kinder and wiser. For eighteen centuries, ever since the Great Exemplar of th...