Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/346

to sunshine. In the wonders of Science they behold not the marvels she has achieved but the desirable ends she has failed to compass.

Their indulgence of this fault-finding passion gradually renders them skeptical of the existence of all genius and greatness, all truth and triumph. They believe in nothing but the earth's imperfections and man's short-comings.

But it is in the every-day contact with humanity that this condemning, hypercritical spirit proves most tormenting and most disastrous. The constitutional fault-seeker never makes a new acquaintance without tearing the unlucky individual's character to pieces, to search out all its crooked turns, sharp angles, and weak points. If the nature he is dissecting chance to be one enriched with many virtues,—virtues which the ready censor never himself possessed,—he tries to drag it down to his own level, by pronouncing its graces assumed and its goodness spurious. If, on the other hand, it be a temperament full of faults, he glories over their discovery, and points them out with compassionless zeal. He never admits, as excuse, the plea of inherited evil, the lack of early discipline, the contagion of forced association; and he never dreams that he is prone to the same failings himself, but lifts up his eyes and hands and thanks Heaven that he is "not such a man." Not a foible escapes his keen scrutiny; he drags the merest weaknesses into broad light; magnifies