Article August 23, 1900 Issue

Respect for Others' Views

Boston Herald

In the annual baccalaureate sermon at Tufts College, June 17, 1900, the president, Elmer H. Capen, D.D., spoke in part as follows: —

It is important that we should get the point of view of even an opponent. Failure to do this is, I think, the source of most contentions. Seen from the piazza of the Fabyan House, Mount Washington presents the appearance of a gigantic eagle. From some parts of Gorham its sides seem notched and scarred, mighty and terrible, but without much suggestion of beauty, while from the bridge at Shelburne, where you see the whole mountain from foot to summit, set in its gorgeous framework of surrounding hills, you have a picture of a vast and living pyramid floating in a landscape that is liquid with beauty, and yet it is the same old mountain all the time. They who have looked upon but one side of it know but a fraction of its reality. It is the same with truth. Most men see only a segment or some particular aspect of it. This often leads them to think that to be true which other men see is not true at all.

For, after all, differences are superficial and similarities are profound. If we regard only the externals of human society, if we look only at what appears in the different orders of civilization, if we observe only the various customs which prevail among men, we shall very likely reach the conclusion that vast and irreconcilable differences divide the races, and even the nationalities, of the world. But when we look deeper we reach another conclusion.

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