Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/684

668 selfish motives, and still better policy to cultivate kindliness and consideration as qualities sure to be fruitful of profit. The kindly nature which leads to spontaneous good-will toward others, independently of any consideration of gain to self, is even more profitable than cultivated kindliness. Those are lucky who possess such a nature—lucky rather than deserving of special credit, seeing that a sympathetic nature is born in a man, not made by culture. Yet the will has much to do with the development of kindliness; and many, by sensible reflection and constant watchfulness over the undue promptings of self, have trained themselves to a kindliness and geniality of manner such as they were not naturally gifted with, and this without any direct reference to self-interest, but as a matter of right and justice to their fellows. Such men deserve much credit for their care in correcting inherent tendencies to undue care of self. The increased happiness of their lives (in so far at least as happiness depends on conduct) is their reward.

Among the good effects of kindly regard for others we may note the reflected happiness derived from those around. Men vary with their company, and undoubtedly the man of sympathetic temperament whose presence is a pleasure to others finds others much pleasanter in their relations with him than they would be were he of hard, ungenial nature. The wife and children of the kindly man are a constant pleasure to him, where the wife and children of the sour-tempered, ungenial husband and father are apt to grow gloomy and quarrelsome. His friends and relatives are kindlier than those of the harsh and selfish. Abroad, he sees few faces which do not reflect something of his own brightness and cheerfulness. As Mr. Herbert Spencer well says: "Such a one is practically surrounded by a world of better people than one who is less attractive: if we contrast the state of a man possessing all the material means to happiness, but isolated by his absolute egoism, with the state of an altruistic man relatively poor in means but rich in friends, we may see that various gratifications not to be purchased by money come in abundance to the last, and are inaccessible to the first."

But in yet other ways do we find illustrated by the effects of due care for others the saying, "To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have."

Not only has the hard and ungenial man fewer gratifications, but those which he has he enjoys less than the man who cares for the wants and wishes of others. The one loses the power of enjoyment through his over-anxiety for self-gratification, the other unconsciously pursues—through his kindliness of character—the very course which a wise and thoughtful consideration of the plan best qualified to secure self-gratification would suggest. The one, while caring unduly for himself, is exhausting and satiating his power to care for any form of pleasure, the other while ministering to the enjoyments of others is