e, whom the more we would do
for, the more we would have to do for, who, in other words, would become
dependent, losing their sense of self-dependence. For such the highest
service one can render is as judiciously and as indirectly as possible
to lead them to the sense of self-reliance. Then there are others whose
natures are such that, the more they are helped, the more they expect,
the more they demand, even as their right, who, in other words, are
parasites or vultures of the human kind. In this case, again, the
greatest service that can be rendered may be a refusal of service, a
refusal of aid in the ordinary or rather expected forms, and a still
greater service in the form of teaching them that great principle of
justice, of compensation, that runs through all the universe,--that for
every service there must be in some form or another an adequate service
in return, that the law of compensation in one form or another is
absolute, and, in fact, the greatest forms of service we can render any
one are, generally speaking, along the lines of teaching him the great
laws of his own being, the great laws of his true possibilities and
powers and so the great laws of self-help.

And, again, it is possible for one whose heart goes out in love and
service for all, and who, by virtue of lacking that long range of vision
or by virtue of not having a grasp of things in their entirety or
wholeness, may have his time, his energies so dissipated in what seems
to be the highest service that he is continually kept from his own
highest unfoldment, powers, and possessions, the very things that in
their completeness would make him a thousand-fold more effective and
powerful in his own life, and hence in the life of real service and
influence. And, in a case of this kind, many times the mark of the most
absolute unselfishness is a strong and marked selfishness, which will
prove however to be a selfishness only in the seeming.

_The self should never be lost sight of. It is the one thing of supreme
importance, the greatest factor even in the life of the greatest
service_. Being always and necessarily precedes doing: having always and
necessarily precedes giving. But this law also holds: that when there is
the being, it is all the more increased by the doing; when there is the
having, it is all the more increased by the giving. _Keeping to one's
self dwarfs and stultifies. Hoarding brings loss: using brings even
greater gain_. In brief, th