THE POINT OF VIEW

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 18900, 22 December 1923, Page 4

THE POINT OF VIEW

The point of view is a thing of many angles, and it has occurred to the London Times to remark how few people appear to realise the overwhelming part it plays in the world. It is often noticeable in the Law Courts, and is the familiar experience of daily life. Two persons are assumed to have seen the same thing. But they have seen it from different angles, or from the standpoint of different prepossessions, and have, in fact, not seen the same thing at all. They are both telling the truth according to their lights, but their lights are of different colour and intensity. It is not for any man to cast the first stone. • Even material things wear very different looks according as they are seen from above or from below, from this side or from that, under the stress of this emotion or the other. The probability of divergent views is immensely increased when we leave the mere three-dimensional world for the realm of such infinitely various incommensurables as moods, feelings, temperaments, and characters. Seeing that its influence can be so vital, the wonder is that men are so little careful in allowing for the point of view of

others or in selecting their own. It I is true that for the majority of men I there seems to be little or no room for j choice. By the time they reach the age of conscious decision their point of , view has been determined for them by i parental influence, education, and the • general pressure of their surroundings, | Their feet are set in one place and 1 their eyes are fixed in one direction. I It never occurs to them that any other , outlook is open to them. They are , equally unable to conceive that others • may have a different point of view and I may honestly see things otherwise. Be- | liefs and opinions which are not their j own are therefore set down to stupid- ; ity, to perverseness, or tto wilful distortion of the truth. To a man so embedded in his point of view the shock of sorrow or adversity which dislodges him from his concreted emplacement comes as sheer salvation. Ejected from his ancient stronghold, he becomes aware of other points of view which i command the field more fairly and more 1 thoroughly than his own. It is a new ' world that ho sees when he no longer ' looks out upon it from the narrow loop hole of a self strongly entrenched in its own desires and needs.