[Note: written back during that oh-so-famous presidential election…remember the hanging chads?] So the election is not determined yet, and I’ve been having dreams about counting and recounting. This week’s selection goes out to our dear candidates, their lawyers, the media, the Florida state officials, and everyone else involved in this crazy political mess. It’s from a book titled Manners, Culture and Dress, written by Richard A. Wells.
1891: Narrow and Limited Views
Be Not Too Confident. Some persons are so confident they are in the right that they will not come within the hearing of any opinion but their own. They canton out to themselves a little province in the intellectual world, where they fancy the light shines, and all the rest is in darkness. Believing that it is impossible to learn something from persons they consider much below themselves.
Narrow and Limited Views. We are all short-sighted creatures; our views are also, narrow and limited; we often see but one side of a matter, and do not extend our sight far and wide enough to reach everything that has a connection with the thing we talk of. We see but in part; therefore it is no wonder we form incorrect conclusions, because we don’t survey the whole of any subject.
Consulting With Others. We have a different prospect of the same thing, according to the different positions of our understandings toward it; a weaker man may sometimes light on truths which have escaped a stronger, and which the wiser man might make a happy use of, if he would condescend to take notice of them.
Source: Wells, Richard A. Manners, Culture and Dress of the Best American Society. Springfield, Mass.: King, Richardson & Co., 1891.
~ pp. 62-63 ~