The Saving Grace

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 17, 14 October 1933, Page 20

The Saving Grace

“What the good people of the world could do if they would once decide to work together in regard to all the ly tilings about which they are agreed. !| lias never yet been discovered, for the | very reason that such an apparently | sensible decision has never yet been | arrived at. I

“It does seem strange, and quite too bad, that good people are not more co-operative than they are, but so often they tend to go off on separate ways and lay an undue stress upon the things concerning which they are not in agreement. Being good people, they ought to be in agreement about a great many things, but so often one would not think so by observing them. “And it seems to have been that way for a long, long time. John Ruskin puts the situation as he saw it in his day in a few sentences that deserve to be quoted:

“ ‘At every moment of our lives we should be trying to find out, not in what we differ from other people, but in what we agree with them: and the moment we find we can agree as to anything that should be done, kind or good (and who but fools couldn’t?), then do it; push nt it together: you can’t, quarrel in a side-by-side push; but the moment that even the best men stop pushing and begin talking, they mistake their pugnacity for piety, and it’s all over?”—“The New Outlook of Canada."