A presumption of good
intentions must always be maintained, even if appearances are black.
It is more shameful, as La Rochefoucauld said, to distrust a friend
than to be deceived by him. Indeed, these deceptions and disillusions
are oftenest the result of our own mistaken idealization; we must expect
neither perfection nor those particular virtues in which we ourselves
are especially punctilious, and undertake to love and cleave to a mortal,
not an angel. Friendship requires not only that we lend a hand when
help is needed; it implies patience and tact and the endeavor to
understand. Through common experiences, repeated interchange
of thought and observation, mutual enjoyment of beauty and fun,
particularly in expressing common ideals and working together for
common causes, there grows to maturity this wonderful relationship
"the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which many summers
and many winters must ripen."
(4) Beyond the boundaries of blood and friendship lie a whole hierarchy
of lesser relationships-to neighbors, to employees, to fellow townsmen,
to human beings the world over. Mere proximity constitutes a claim that
is not commonly acknowledged when distance interposes;
most men would be mortally ashamed to let a next-door neighbor starve,
although they may feel no call to lessen their luxuries when thousands,
whom they could as easily succor, are perishing in the antipodes. And
there is a measure of necessity in this; to burden our minds with the
thought of the suffering in India, in Russia, in Japan, leads to a
paralyzing sense of impotence.
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