umanity is required to enable men to endure for long the
dreariness and disillusion so often incident to philanthropic
work, the conflicts and disappointments of public administration.
Certainly this is true of the first rank of statesmen; no
characterization of Lincoln fails to emphasize his essential
humanity and tenderness.

Disinterested love for humanity is normally most intense
in the adolescent.[2] The pressure of private concerns, of one's
narrowing interest in one's own career, one's own family, and
small circle of friends, the restriction of one's sympathies by
fixed habits and circumscribed experience, all tend to dampen
by middle age the ardor of the man who as an undergraduate
at eighteen set out to make the world "a better place to live
in." But more effective in dampening enthusiasm is the disillusion
and weariness that set in after a period of exuberant
and romantic benevolence to mankind in general. "We
call pessimists," writes a contemporary French philosopher,
"those who are in reality only disillusioned optimists."[1] So
the cynic may be fairly described as a disheartened lover of
men. It is only an unusual gift of affectionate good-will
that enables mature men, after rough and disillusioning experiences
in public life, to maintain without sentimentality a genuine
and persistent interest in the welfare of others. Those in
whom the fund of human kindness is slender will, and easily
do, become cynical and hard.

[Footnote 2: Simeon Strunsky has somewhere remarked: "At eighteen
a man is interested in causes; at twenty-eight in commutation
tickets."]

[Footnote 1: Georges Sorel: _Reflection on Violence_ (English
translation), p. 9.]

The attitude of affection for others is profoundly influential
in stimulating our interest in specific individuals, and modifying
our attitudes toward them. We cannot help being more
interested in those for whom we entertain affection than in
those to whom we are indifferent. In the same way our judgments
of our own friends, families, and children are qualified
by our affection for them. Parents and lovers are notoriously
partial, and a fair judgment of the work of our friends
demands unusual clarity, determination, and poise.

In a larger way the generally friendly attitude towards
others, genial expansive receptivity, is at the basis of what is
called "charity for human weakness." The gentle cynic can
see and tolerate other men's weaknesses:

"He knows how muc