Article September 6, 1900 Issue

The Courage to Face Ingratitude

William George Jordan

Harper's Bazar

INGRATITUDE is the most popular sin of humanity. It is the shortest cut to the attainment of all the other vices. It eclipses all the virtues of the individual except those that it kills. Ingratitude is forgetfulness of the heart. It is a man's confession that he is armor-proof against kindness. It is the revelation of the emptiness of pretended loyalty. People who are ungrateful never forgive you if you do them a good turn. They resent the humiliation of having been helped by a superior.

Gratitude is thankfulness expressed in action. It is the radiation of justice. It is the heart's recognition of kindness that the lips can never repay. Gratitude never counts its payments. No debt of kindness can ever be outlawed; it can never be paid in full. Gratitude ever feels the insignificance of its instalments; ingratitude, the nothingness of the debt. Gratitude is the flowering of a seed of kindness; ingratitude is the dead inactivity of a seed of kindness dropped on a stone.

Grateful recognition of goodness and favor is gratifying and stimulating. It is a tonic we should always give but never crave. We must rise superior to dependence on human gratitude, or we can do nothing truly great. The expectation of gratitude is the alloy of an otherwise noble act. The only real reason for doing right is because it is right—everything else is an excuse, not a reason. Because we meet with ingratitude in life we must not feel that our good deeds have failed; they merely have not been appreciated. Most persons look at gratitude as a protective tariff on virtues. The man who is weakened in well-doing by the ingratitude of others is serving God on a commission basis. He should be honest enough to see that he is working for a reward—he is expecting a bonus for doing good. He is really regarding his kindness and virtues as moral stock that he is willing to hold only so long as they pay dividends. Ingratitude is harder to bear than failure, sorrow, or reverses. Its most bitter sting is that it touches us on our vulnerable spot—our vanity. We are chagrined that our judgment has been proved wrong, that our goodness has not been appreciated, that we have been deceived.

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