But in the meantime we need have no fear that the
virtue of open-minded consideration will become a cheap
and easy virtue, or that it will ever be lacking in dignity
and high significance. Open-mindedness is not so much
a state as a practical attitude. And we are not by nature
open-minded. By nature, in the brute sense, we are
passionate, prejudiced, suspicious, small-minded, and
mean. When a difficulty arises with your neighbor,
Nature says, "Strike first and investigate afterwards."
When your butcher overcharges you, Nature suggests
that you leave the bill wholly unpaid. If your neighbor
insults you, forget that he has any rights whatever. To
be steadfastly reasonable under provocation (not pa-
tiently humble), to remember your neighbor's interests
when he has forgotten yours, to meet injustice with
exact justice, violence with temperate consideration, --
I can conceive of no virtue of a higher order, no concep-
tion of morality which expresses more exactly the superi-
ority of spiritual agents over brute force.

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