Instead of losing himself by digressing from his subject and by placing himself on the summits of psychology, he remains with us, puts himself on the level of the most humble among us, and says to us all: 

“The best way to use common sense in daily life consists in declaring one’s honest intentions.

“What should I do if I were in the place of the person with whom I am discussing?

“I found myself one day on the slope of a hill named Yung-Tshi, and I remarked that the majority of the trees were stript of their foliage.

“The season seeming to me not sufficiently advanced for this condition of vegetation, I exprest my astonishment to a passer-by, who replied to me: 

“’Alas!  This occurs every year at the same time, and it is not well to cultivate trees on the height of Yung-Tshi, for the sun, being too hot, dries them up before the time when the foliage ought to fall.’

“A few days afterward my steps lead me on the opposite slope of the same hill.

“There the trees were covered with foliage, still green but uncommon, and their appearance indicated an unhealthy condition of growth.

“‘Alas!’ said a man who was working in the hedges to me, ’it is not well to cultivate trees on the height of Tung-Tshi, for the sun never shines there, and they can only acquire the vigor they would possess if they were planted in another country.’

“And, altho recognizing the truth of these two opinions, so contradictory, I could not help thinking that they were the reproduction of those which men, deprived of common sense, express every day.

“The same hill produced a vegetation, affected in different ways, by reason of different causes; and the people, instead of taking into consideration how carelessly they had chosen the location of their plantation, preferred to attribute the defect to the site itself, rather than to their lack of precaution.

“Both of them were suffering from a hurtful exaggeration, but each one explained it in a way arbitrarily exclusive.

“He of the north made out that the sun never shone on the summit of Yung-Tshi, and the inhabitant of the south affirmed that the health-giving shade was unknown there.”

This is why it is indispensable to the successful resolution of the thousand and one problems of daily life, both those whose sole importance is derived from their multiplicity and those whose seriousness justly demands our attention, to employ the very simple method which prescribes that we place ourselves mentally in the position and circumstances of the person with whom we are discussing.

If each one of the inhabitants of Yung-Tshi had followed this precept, instead of declaring that the hill never received the sun or that shade never fell upon it, they would each one have thought for himself.

“At what conclusions should I arrive, if I had planted my trees on the opposite side?”