magination,
however, can be cultivated.

You hate my father. He injured yours--unjustly, to your mind, of course,
for yours can do no wrong. From my point of view this father of mine is
a great, good man. From your point of view he is wicked and cruel. We
are both honest in our emotion-directed opinions. Until you can know my
father as I know him, and I can know yours as you know him, we shall
never agree about them. But I _can_ learn to understand _why_ you feel
as you do, and you _can_ learn to understand _why_ I feel as I do. I can
put myself, in imagination, in your place, and see that other man as my
father, and pretty well grasp your point of view, and you can likewise
get mine.

After all, the law is very simple. Each man is the result of the things
he puts his attention chiefly upon; and he puts it naturally upon the
things which his forebears and his surroundings have held before him.
The rare person and the trained person can assert the "vital spark" of
his own personality and tear attention away from the easy direction and
force, and hold it somewhere else. So he can change his points of view
by learning that there are other vantage grounds which direct to better
results. With some one else to lead the way and give a bit of help, or
with the urge of desire to understand the new viewpoint, or by the drive
of his will, he can change his own.

Let us not forget that what we see depends on whether or not our eyes
are normal, on where we look, or on what kind of spectacles we wear. Two
things we can change--where we look, and the spectacles. If our eyes
were made wrong we probably cannot change that, but we can often correct
poor vision by right artificial lenses. There are people doomed to live
in most unattractive, crowded surroundings who make a flower-garden of
charm and sweetness there, or, without grounds, keep a window-box of
fragrance. The normal person can pretty largely either make the most
impossible environment serve his ends or get into a better one. So we
can usually look to something constructive, helpful, attractive, or
beautiful; and we can refuse to wear blue spectacles.

We nurses soon realize that there are just about as many points of view
as there are people, and that if we would help cure attitudes as well as
bodies, and so lessen the tendency to sickness, it behooves us to learn
to see what the other man sees through his eyes or by the use of his
glasses, from where he stands.

Let us