Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-02-24
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

! two, but he whispers in the ordinary
ear about once a minute.
This fellow" he says softly, "in an
| idle moment, without much thought
one way or other, has dared to scott
| The good God who sees and knoweth
all realizes that his heart is right. but
| you must not give him credit for that.
| He has offended you. He has scoffed. has
! he not? He has dared to say something
which you, in your righteousness, do not
! like. Do not hesitate He who hesi-
tates is lost Ito kindness, to decency,
| to brotherhood). Freeze up on him
from now on and forever more. You
have plenty of precedent"
When 1t comes to crediting others
| with good motives, or better motives,
for anything, in any given situation,
far too many people seem to develop
an almost perverse tendency to 90 the
other way. With what aplomh they
jump to the wrong conclusioni The
astute can tell at once which tack
they will take. because it is always the
one away from fairness, from any at
tempt to properly think a thing out.
To adopt the latter course demands that
one give another human being credit
for something, and there is scarcely
anything surer in life than that most
people want to reserve most of that for
themselves.
If we attempt to trace this strange
reluctance to its source, we end in an
imal nature. Most of humanity's traits
end there, although often the relation
ship is obscure. Here we are confronted
with the queer relation between a brute
getting its dinner and a human being
refusing to credit another human being
with an intention for something good.
Let us consider the two The animal
knows, with that dim yet sure knowl-
edge Of the brutes, that dinners do not
grow on trees, and that if he doesn' t
eat this one in a hurry some other
creature will get part of it. So he
gulps 1t. Nature has made his digestive
system so that he can swallow hunks
of meat without chewing them He
Is suspicious, If We may permit such a
characteristic to him, of the world in
general, and especially of events which
may happen.
A human being, with some 5000 years
of civilization behind him (recent dis
coveries in Ur of Chaldea place the
flood about 4400 B. c., but civiliza-
ton probably goes back 1000 years
further), still finds food, shelter and
clothing basic requirements of life on
this planet. Even those who deprecate
these requirements as much as they
can still live in houses, eat food and
wear clothes. That queer human ami
NAL, the salesman who comes to your
door trying to sell you something you
want or don't want, as the case may
be, is seeking his dinner as surely as
any tiger or lion that ever trod grass
softly. The thing is beautifully in
direct, by now, but it is just the same
in essence. And the lengths the fell
low will go to argue you down shows
that he Is afraid of you, above all, sus-
picious of you You may get some of
his dinner. In fact you already have
some of it and won't let go!
Suspicion, then. takes it's rightful
place as the devil of this world It
is the trail of the serpent over us all.
If it could be rooted out of humanity,
wars would cease, and the nations
might live in blessed amity. But IS
roots go long way back. It's tentacles
are firmly fixed in the fabric OF the
world. They are solid, thick. mental
as well as physical. 1t takes all the
intellectual and spiritual qualities a
man has to free himself from suspicion
OF motives, and to accept the other
fellow at his face value-or better.
Especially better. 1t is only in us in
our better moments to be fair. Most
of the time humanity is too busly
engaged in getting its dinner to bother
about such an abstract quality as right
eousness and its judgments. 1t puts
on the great things for special mo-
ments, thinking that anything will do
for the everyday, only to find at last
that the little things made the largest
showing, and that hasty judgments kept
man forever looking at the wrong side
of the medal.