In the occurrence of unpleasant things among neighbors, fear comes readily to heart and magnifies the consequence of the other party; but it is a bad counsellor.  Every man is actually weak and apparently strong.  To himself he seems weak; to others formidable.  You are afraid of Grim; but Grim also is afraid of you.  You are solicitous of the good will of the meanest person, uneasy at his ill will.  But the sturdiest offender of your peace and of the neighborhood, if you rip up his claims, is as thin and timid as any; and the peace of society is often kept, because, as children say, one is afraid and the other dares not.  Far off, men swell, bully and threaten:  bring them hand to hand, and they are a feeble folk.

It is a proverb that “courtesy costs nothing”; but calculation might come to value love for its profit.  Love is fabled to be blind, but kindness is necessary to perception; love is not a hood, but an eye-water.  If you meet a sectary or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines, but meet on what common ground remains,—­if only that the sun shines and the rain rains for both,—­the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it, the boundary mountains on which the eye had fastened have melted into air.  If he set out to contend,[686] almost St. Paul will lie, almost St. John will hate.  What low, poor, paltry, hypocritical people an argument on religion will make of the pure and chosen souls.  Shuffle they will and crow, crook and hide, feign to confess here, only that they may brag and conquer there, and not a thought has enriched either party, and not an emotion of bravery, modesty, or hope.  So neither should you put yourself in a false position to your contemporaries by indulging a vein of hostility and bitterness.  Though your views are in straight antagonism[687] to theirs, assume an identity of sentiment, assume that you are saying precisely that which all think, and in the flow of wit and love roll out your paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of a doubt.  So at least shall you get an adequate deliverance.  The natural emotions of the soul are so much better than the voluntary ones that you will never do yourself justice in dispute.  The thought is not then taken hold of by the right handle, does not show itself proportioned and in its true bearings, but bears extorted, hoarse, and half witness.  But assume a consent and it shall presently be granted, since really and underneath their all external diversities, all men are of one heart and mind.

Wisdom will never let us stand with any man or men on an unfriendly footing.  We refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited for some better sympathy and intimacy to come.  But whence and when?  To-morrow will be like to-day.  Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live.  Our friends and fellow-workers die off from us.  Scarcely can we say we see new men, new women, approaching us.  We are too old to regard fashion, too old