result will be the gradual decline, and
ultimately the death, of the superior person in oneself. It is true
that the superior person in oneself has nine lives, and is capable of
rising from the dead after even the most fatal blows. But, at worst,
the superior person--(and who among us does not shelter that sinister
inhabitant in his soul?)--will have a very poor time in the soul of him
who steadily practises the imaginative understanding of other people.
In the first place, the mere exercise of the imagination on others
absolutely scotches egotism as long as it lasts, and leaves it weakened
afterwards. And, in the second and more important place, an improved
comprehension of others (which means an intensified sympathy with them)
must destroy the illusion, so widespread, that one's own case is
unique. The amicable study of one's neighbours on the planet inevitably
shows that the same troubles, the same fortitudes, the same feats of
intelligence, the same successes and failures, are constantly happening
everywhere. One can, indeed, see oneself in nearly everybody else, and,
in particular, one is struck by the fact that the quality in which one
took most pride is simply spread abroad throughout humanity in heaps!
It is only in sympathetically contemplating others that one can get
oneself in a true perspective. Yet probably the majority of human
beings never do contemplate others, save with the abstracted gaze which
proves that the gazer sees nothing but his own dream.

* * * * *

Another result of the discipline is an immensely increased interest in
one's friends. One regards them even with a sort of proprietary
interest, for, by imagination, one has come into sympathetic possession
of them. Further, one has for them that tender feeling which always
follows the conferring of a benefit, especially the secret conferring of
a benefit. It is the benefactor, not the person benefited, who is
grateful. The benefit which one has conferred is, of course, the gift of
oneself. The resulting emotion is independent of any sympathy rendered
by the other; and where the sympathy is felt to be mutual, friendship
acquires a new significance. The exercise of sympathetic imagination
will cause one to look upon even a relative as a friend--a startling
achievement! It will provide a new excitement and diversion in life.

When the month of December dawns, there need be no sensation of weary
apprehension about th