ible for an honest man to understand Iago, and for a clean man
to understand Don Juan. Although in neither case will the man who
understands sympathize with the sin, in both cases the understanding
will be clear and comprehensive. A child cannot understand either Iago
or Don Juan, neither can a childish man; but a truly _childlike_ man can
understand all phases of temptation and sin, and estimate them justly.

There is an innocence of ignorance, and there is an innocence of wisdom.
The innocence of ignorance is involuntary. It is innocence because it
cannot be anything else. A little child is in the innocence of
ignorance, and it is from that protective innocence that we feel the
fresh, happy atmosphere of childhood. The innocence of wisdom is
possible only to those who have known temptation and, through overcoming
it, have learned to recognize all sin for what it really is,--the filth
and disease of the soul, and to avoid it as such. The fresh life that
springs from such struggle and conquest of selfish tendencies brings
with it a vigor of innocence which has a quality of life akin to that of
a healthy child, with the added power and insight of a man's maturity.
Whatever form or phase of temptation his fellow men may be in, such a
man, from his own experience, has found the means of understanding them.
He has found the means of understanding his neighbor, whether the
neighbor is immersed in self-indulgence, is struggling desperately to
gain his freedom, or is well along upon the upward path.

A man who can only understand certain special phases of human nature is
narrow and provincial, however he may assume the air of a man of the
world; and the false assumption of a broad understanding renders him
practically still more narrow and provincial, for it stands in the way
of his learning from those who have it in their power to instruct him.
But the true man of the world, whose breadth of vision and penetration
of insight are the result of a working familiarity with universal
principles in practical life, detests sin without condemning the sinner,
and is not befooled by the shallow pretensions of the provincial
Pharisee.

To know the world we must not only be able to understand all phases of
it in general, but we must also understand the various types in
particular. There are nations, there are grades and phases of life in
each nation, and there are individuals in each phase. There is as great
a difference between the in