The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1915-11-08
Forgiiviing.
ny JOHN ID. BARRY.

ny JOHN ID. BARRY.
Josephine Dodge Daskam. in one of her anus
ing stories of chd-life, tells of little girl in a
boarding school who used to exasperate her COM
panions by going about "fergivng" them for Of
lenses they were unconscious Of having COM
mitted
That little girl illustrates one Of the commonest
of human qualities. We arc often noble at the
expense OF Others forgving them for offenses they
have never committed that exist in our minds
alone that we have brought on ourselves by
misbehavior
There is story told about band of des-
pcradoes that used to go out killing people. One
of them, convicted of seventeen murders. was
asked the scaffold if he had anything to say.
He nodded his head and he gave the world this
farewell message: al forgive every one"
The people who never think of forgiveness or
of unforgiveness the lucky ones. They have
the power to forget their injuries, either imagined
or real, which is the only way to treat them. For
injuries like everything else in the world. Show
forgiveness and you will find plenty OF occasions
for exercising forgiveness. But if you forget about
yourself altogether you will have nothing to for
give The truth of this philosophy we have ex-
pressed in of our current phrases, Forget it."
Injuries strange things. Accept them, take
them into your consciousness, coddle them, and
they will become the greatest interest-bearers in
the world. Beside them, the usurer's money is
sterile Indeed, the capital, we'll the interest
keeps increasing. The injuries lead to reprisals
The reprisals bring more injuries. More people
are likely to become involved. In the face of all
such disaster what does forgiveness amount to?
On this subject Tolstoy has written some OF his
brilliant fiction and some Of his most search
ing homilics.
Mr.. w. d. Howells has expressed the noblest
possible human attitude in the matter OF forgive
ness in these lines:
Judge me not or Judge myself, o Lord;
Show me some mercy or | may not live.
Let the good in 60 without reward
Forgive the evil ] cannot forgive.
The evil in oneself that one cannot forgive
may, in a sense, be said to be conquered. At any
rate, it has ceased to be part OF oneself 1t has
become an alien presence. With sufficient time it
cannot fail to be thrown off. Often, indeed, the
mere recognition OF it evil is enough to drive
it out of oneself. And as for the good, merely the
is sufficient reward. People who arc
good for Interior motives have not achieved good
ness. They do not really know its value. They
cannot completely and sympathetically identity
themselves with it. Until they love it for itself
they cannot be mbued with it and permanently
sustained.
What need in the world is not more for
giveness but more consciousness of our true rela-
ton to fellow beings. If we really under
stood and lived by this relation we should each
find that like the poet have quoted, there was
one person alone could not forgive-oneself.
And this discovery would give us a wholesome
stimulation to change attitude. In our alb
sorption in the wrongs we suffer we are apt to
ignore the wrongs do, particularly those We
do unconsciously, through false attitude to-
ward life and toward fellow creatures the atti
tude made by our egotism.
The psychologists and the social workers often
have on their lips saying that ought to serve us
both as warning and as a reason for being less
resentful and more patient. Every man is justi
fed from his own point of view" Think how
each of us justifes himself. Then remember that
there are millions exactly like ourselves in this
regard. Just many Of us engaged in cen
surfing certain great figures for their greed and
arrogance and cruel indifference to the needs and
the rights of the of mankind II we were
in their places, with their qualities and their train
ing we should be just like them. Their point of
view would be point of view. From it we
should justify ourselves.
Is there to be no change then? Must men go
on resenting and forgiving or not forgiving, and
keeping each his own self-justifying point OF
view?
There is to be change in spite of the diff
culties and discouragements 1t has already be-
gun. There is in the world new enlightenment,
a new understanding How it has come would
be hard to trace Perhaps egotism has over
reached itself.
1t has made itself so monstrous that the hor-
ror of it and the shs&ne slamored for realization