Human Despicableness

The exaggerated drive for power with which some children wish to assure their prestige over their environment soon forces them into an attitude of resistance against the ordinary tasks and duties of everyday life. Compare such a power-hungry individual with the ideal social being, and one can, after some little experience, specify, so to speak, his social index, that is, the degree to which he has removed himself from his fellow man. A keen judge of human nature, keeping his eyes open to the value of physical defects and inferiorities, knows nevertheless that such character traits were impossible without antecedent difficulties in the evolution of his soul.