A good, clear-headed lawyer should understand not only his client's point of view, but also that of his opponent. A man can never lose his own ground by truly "throwing himself on the side of his antagonist." An all-round clear-headedness is a necessity to the best growth in us of true principles. When a man's eye is single his whole body will be full of light, and such light penetrates far and wide within and along the whole horizon, and shows characters, affairs, and circumstances, for what they really are. But no man's eye can be single unless he takes a clear, unprejudiced view of his fellow men in all phases and varieties of life. The very large number and variety of people who come steadily for help to a physician or minister receive the greatest help when the physician or minister understands the world entirely without prejudice. A quiet understanding of human nature, and a brave, gentle manner of dealing with others is one of the greatest blessings that can come to any man. It is absolutely impossible to rid ourselves of prejudice without at the same time gaining freedom from self-love. If a man is favorably prejudiced in a certain direction, it is because there is something in the opposite direction which offends his selfishness. To gain freedom from the prejudice he must see and acknowledge heartily the selfishness in himself which is at its root. This is often a difficult thing to do, for a prejudice may have come to us through the selfish egotism of some far-away ancestor, and may have become rooted in our own personality before we realized its true nature. To be a man of the world one must be able to understand the world,--not three or four corners of it, but the whole of it. This expansion of mind and soul is possible to every man who will first understand himself, and no man can understand himself who is blindly indulging his own selfishness. Every day we are seeing people who are living and acting in the grossest selfishness and they do not know it. Such people sometimes frighten those who are observing them. "If John Smith," I say to myself, "is the human beast that I see him to be, and does not know it, perhaps I am unconsciously just as brutal as John, and do not know it; and if I am, how can I find it out?" We must have the habit of first casting the beam out of our own eye, before we can be ready to help take the mote from our brother's eye; and the only possible way to be sure of finding ourselves out, is to be quietly, willingly, open to criticism; to take every criticism, not with a desire to prove ourselves right, but with an earnest desire to find out and act upon the truth. I do not mean necessarily to invite criticism,--it will come fast enough without invitation,--but to welcome it when it appears, and to try at once to see ourselves with the eyes of our critics.