Every-day Thoughts in Prose and Verse
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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LXXIII.
Hate No One.
    You said recently that the straight path to glory can be
found one who worships God and loves his brother as
himself in business and in pleasure, at home and abroad.
Can a man love his rival and competitor in business--the man
whose ruin or failure would mean to him a prosperous busi-
ness, increased wealth, and less mental worry?  Would not
co-operation as socialists advocate do away with the bad and
inhuman feeling that competition creates?       A FRIEND.

A Man may not be able to feel a deep fountain
of love in his soul for an individual who is
blocking his way to success.  But meantime there
is nothing gained by hating him, and a great deal
is lost by it.
    Hate is poison.  I once visited the laboratory of
a scientific man, where, by a peculiar combination
of chemicals he was able to test the mental mood
of a person who breathed into a glass cylinder.
Different mental conditions produced different col-
ors in the chemicals.  Anger and resentment pro-
duced an ugly brown effect--and in the chemicals
thus colored by anger, a virulent poison was gener-
ated.
    This puts a scientific basis to the theory of spirit-
ual-minded people.  That hate is poison.
    It poisons the air we breathe, and poisons our
own bodies.  It produces disease and misfortune.
Look about you at the people who are full of
hatred, revenge, and jealousy.  You will find they
are always in trouble.  Everything goes wrong
with them--sickness pursues them, and disasters
befall them.  They think they are badly treated by
fate, and never dream that they are their own
fate.
    If you fill your veins with a poisonous fluid, you
will suffer for it.  If you fill your mind with poison,
you will suffer the same results.
    Our social conditions are those which breed dis-
content, and jealousy, and despair.
    Our competitive system is filling prisons and
insane asylums.
    But when any evil becomes so great as this,
a change is not far distant.
    The dawn of a better day is near.
    Meanwhile, instead of harboring hatred for your
competitors, feel sorry for them.  They are the
victims of a system, just as your are.  They are
caught in the maelstrom, and if they prove to be
stronger swimmers than you, it is no reason why
you should hate them.  Even when they pull your
life preserver away for their own use, remember it
is not because they are evil, but because an evil
social system flung them into this maelstrom and
crazed them.
    Turn all your mental powers toward changing
this system, not toward hating the victims of it.
    Pity your fellowmen and love them and work for
their emancipation and your own.
    Do not be contented with things as they are.
Contentment means inaction.  Cultivate a whole-
some discontent with wrong conditions, but hate
no one.

        The splendid discontent of God
            With chaos made the world;
        Set suns in place, and filled all space
            With stars that shown and whirled.

        If apes had been content with tails,
            No thing of higher shape
        Had come to birth--the King of Earth
            To-day would be an ape.

        And from the discontent of man,
            The world's best progress springs;
        Then feed the flame--from God it came--
            Until you mount on wings.

Every-day thoughts in prose and verse. by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Chicago: W. B. Conkey Company, 1901.
 
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