Dr. Johnson’s Lesson

Re James Corsones ’75’s letter, “Agreeing to Disagree” (Inbox, Dec. 5):

James, brilliant. I am a fellow Libra. We live in Princeton. So we get Tigers of all stripes visiting us from everywhere for Princeton events. We love them all (the Tigers, that is), though inevitably the weekends go by with an abundance of name-calling. It is mostly “liberal wacko” or “Nazi.” Everyone accepts their sobriquets. All in good fun. We love these people. Though some we acknowledge as true nutcases.

 But here is an anecdote that could save the world. One day Samuel Johnson was walking down a street in London with his biographer Boswell when, turning to Boswell, Johnson said, pointing to a gent across the street approaching in the opposite direction, “Boswell, I hate that man.” To which Boswell responded, “But Dr. Johnson, you do not even know that man. How could you hate him?” And the sage polymath replied, “Boswell, if I knew him, I could not hate him.”