The man who takes pleasure in using
influence, or setting a lofty example, is just as arid a dilettante as
the musician who plays, or the artist who paints, for the sake of the
applause and the admiration he wins; he is only regarding others as so
many instruments for registering his own level of complacency. Every
one, even the least complicated of mankind, must know the exquisite
pleasure that comes from doing the simplest and humblest service to one
whom he loves; how such love converts the most menial office into a
luxurious joy; and the higher that a man goes, the more does he discern
in every single human being with whom he is brought into contact a soul
whom he can love and serve. Of course it is but an elementary pleasure
to enjoy pleasing those whom we regard with some passion of affection,
wife or child or friend, because, after all, one gains something oneself
by that. But the purest morality of all discerns the infinitely lovable
quality which is in the depth of every human soul, and lavishes its
tenderness and its grace upon it, with a compassion that grows and
increases, the more unthankful and clumsy and brutish is the soul which
it sets out to serve.
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