The Japanese have a proverb, born of the optimistic point-of-view, that is very useful to them, inasmuch as the light wood-construction of their houses invites frequent fires and sweeping losses in consequence. After a fire it is fashionable in Japan for sufferers to greet each other in sympathy with the truism, always accompanied by a smile, "Not much trouble to move," and then they all pitch in to assist as much as possible to rehabilitate each other through kind attentions that really make the fires but hot-bed nurseries of altruistic sympathy, in which there is more joy than in the greatest accumulation of possessions.
After the war--the recent sectional dispute, whose theater of destruction was in the Southern States of America--many of the families of the ante-bellum slave aristocracy were mainly reduced in possessions, and deprived of some of the means of ostentation, and in rare instances, of the necessary means of comfort; but they had been defeated in their Cause, and many of them settled into a state of depression that was more cruel to them than all the reverses of the war. Nature continued to be as kind, the seasons smiled on the crops with unvarying regularity, and the physical scars of war were soon healed and overgrown, but the disappointed ones heeded not the return of material prosperity. They focused their point-of-view upon the past, and refused to see the smiles and the warmth of the present and the promise of the future.
Property aristocracy always creates a false pride, in which the point-of-view is distorted.
It will undoubtedly be the same with the name-proud Greeks as it was with the property-proud Southrons, and bespeaks little for the respectability of a pride that afflicts its victims more seriously than the destruction of property.
It is a meritorious pride that rises superior to defeat, and after saying "Thy Will Be Done" adds, "Teach Thou Me Appreciation," and begins the pursuit of peace anew with the point of view directed by optimism and not by pessimism.
I have seen whole families, suffering from self-imposed humiliation and depression, leap into new life, new growth, and new happiness at a change of the point-of-view. The Southerners are, above all other Americans, chivalrous and loyally American in their natures. They are also generally religious, and cling to the teachings of their parents. In focusing their point-of-view upon the past, and, nursing the sting of defeat, they have thought that they were conserving filial regard, chivalry and religion, and they have held to the distorted point-of-view with loyal purpose. A change of the point-of-view, rising superior to disappointment, more nearly satisfied filial pride, while Christian optimism and gratitude more nearly became the profession of religion than the fault-finding dictated by the antiquated point-of-view. Finding fault with the happenings of the past is as much blasphemy as any other disapproval of the Almighty, and yet blasphemy is regarded as the wickedest of sins in religious estimation; and, at the same time, loading up with a burden of depression and self-humiliation is the most unprofitable form of self-abuse known to economics.