There is a story told in
verse about that curious kind of lizard called the chameleon. Two friends
talking about it almost quarrelled about its colour, one saying it was blue and
the other swearing it was green. While they were arguing, a third man joined them
and he said they were both wrong. He had caught a chameleon the night before,
and it was black. All three went to see it; but when its captor took it out of
the box where he had put it, lo! And behold it was not blue, or green. Or
black, but white. The explanation of course, was that a chameleon has the
stranger power of changing its colour to suit its surroundings. So at [one time
it may appear blue, at another green, at another black, and at another white.
So all were right, and at the same time wrong.
In the same way truth is
many-side and different people see different sides. So every question has at
least two sides. Narrow- minded ‘people can see only one side; and it take a
broad-minded man to & e both.
Consider the different
ways in which different people will look at a social problem, say poverty. Some
will say that poverty is entirety due to laziness, shiftlessness or strong
drink. Let the poor’ work and save and keep sober, and there will be no more
poverty. Other people will point out that idleness, shiftlessness and
drunkenness are themselves the result of poverty — the wretched circumstances
in which the poor are brought up. So one party says, change the man and he will
change his surroundings and the other says, change the surroundings and you
will change the man. And then they quarrel and fight. Yet both are right; each
sees one side of the question, but only one. A wise and broad-minded reformer
will see both, and work both for the individual and for social reform.
Or, take politics. In
most democratic countries there are two great parties, which correspond to the
Conservatives and Liberals or Progressives in England. The Conservative wants
to keep (“conserve”) things as they, fear that any change will do more harm
than good; the Liberal stands for reform, change and progress. Now both are in
a way right. Because no social organization is perfect, we must reform abuses,
adopt better methods, and progress to better things. But it has often happened
(as in the French Revolution) that, if people are in too great a hurry to make
progress, they destroy many good institutions with the bad, and even wreck the
whole constitution. But narrow-minded politicians of different views do not see
this; and so, each seeing only his side of the question, the fight. A real
statesman sees both.