By Fenwicke Holmes.
Sometimes I think that unintentional hurts are more cruel than those that are given in some burst of anger because to be thoughtless along some lines is an indication that we have not cared enough to think how it will affect the other. Then the other cannot but feel that we have not been true to love; and nothing hurts like neglect.
Without love there is nothing; and love languishes on neglect and thoughtlessness. A white-hot iron across the breast will not so mar the body as the word and act that burns its way into the soul of those who had reason to expect better.
Few men or women would think of plunging a dagger into another’s flesh; and yet they use the tongue which is a two-edged sword and turn it within the wound. It pierces the vital atmosphere of the emotional life and makes its mark upon the creative consciousness within. Thus both soul and body are plunged into hell.
The day will come when we shall put a heavy fine upon the man or woman who predicts disaster and disease, and utters croaking forecasts of coming evil, for he is cursing the race. Yet to-day we turn the pages of our newspapers and read of those who prognosticate the return of some dreadful scourge, or some great cataclysm of nature, and then lay out the tools of their industry ready to reap the harvest which their foul seed has caused to spring up.
Direful forecasts, pratings of so-called evil times, fault-finding, pessimistic utterances, slander, gossip of a malicious character — all these are the spawn and the incubus of disease, want and misery, for they fall on the fertile and productive soil of the race-consciousness and, entering any door that swings upon unsuspecting hinges, they make their abode within the body. Here, like a serpent, they coil for the spring, like its bite, they fester in the flesh. Whole peoples have been extinguished by the false gods of the national ideals and ideas, for “thought is father to the act;” and ideas, making their impress upon the creative mind of the individual, the race, and the cosmic consciousness alike bring forth the dread cancer that burns out the life of the nation.
Excerpt from the book “Being and Becoming” by Fenwicke Holmes.