Character by S. S. Times

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 2, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 26.

Character.

By S. S. Times

THE last instrument through which to try to get a comprehensive idea of any large object is the microscope. It does not take more than the fractional part of such an object to cover the whole field of vision; and while the larger part of what you would see is wholly hidden, the single point that you do see is exaggerated into something thousands of times larger than it really is. Above all do not try to get a comprehensive view of a man through a microscope. To gain that, you must stand off at a sufficient distance to include the whole man in your range of vision, and to let every limb and every feature fall into due proportion. But if you turn your microscopic keenness of vision upon a single point in the man's make-up—some surface fault of habit, some slight defect of mind or spirit—you will find that that single point, enlarged beneath your microscopic examination, will fill your whole field of vision, and will shut out the whole and real man. You cannot come to know a man in that way. You may know the pathology of the mole on his cheek, and be learned in the history of the wart upon his hand, but to know the wart and the mole, however accurately, is not to know the man. And, after all, it does not argue either singular breadth of vision or singular depth of insight to lose sight of the man in your view of the magnified wart which really bears as much relation to the whole man as the scratch on the precipice does to the whole mountain.—S. S. Times.