On Appraising People

Consciously or otherwise, we tend to appraise and to classify everyone we see or meet or casually observe. We like their appearance or we do not. We think we would enjoy more of their company or we think we would prefer less of it. We feel somehow that we could trust them or that we could not trust themand so on. And our appraisal of others is exceedingly important, because it is by our judgment of other men that we choose our friends, that we choose our business associates, that we choose our life’s companions and shape the pattern of all the years. It is not so much the things with which we surround ourselves, as the people with whom we surround ourselves, that condition our living and our thinking. But the reliability of our appraisal of others is limited by many factors. Many of the people we observe we see only in one setting, in one situation. We may know them in business and know nothing of their home life. We may see them in church and know nothing of their business practice. We may meet them on formal occasions and know little of their informal conductand yet really to know a man we must know much more than merely what he does under public scrutiny or in polite society. All men do the right thing under some circumstances, but if a particular individual cannot be trusted every day and under all circumstances, we shall always be given to wondering when one of his off days is going to be. We would hesitate to say that he is honest today if he embezzled funds yesterday. If he is careful of his conduct on some occasions, with some people, under some circumstances, and at other times breaks all of the laws and all of the commandmentsor a goodly share of themwe must necessarily be constrained in our confidence, because the principles of honest and virtuous conduct do not apply only to special times and days. In other words, principles don’t cease to be principles on Monday morning.