ong sense of moral issues, a deep feeling of responsibility
and sympathy, an anxious desire to help things forward, then a dramatic
sense of the value of manner, speech, gesture, and demeanour is a highly
effective instrument. It is often said that people who wield a great
personal influence have the gift of making the individual with whom they
are dealing feel that his case is the most interesting and important
with which they have ever come in contact, and of inspiring and
maintaining a special kind of relationship between themselves and their
petitioner. That is no doubt a very encouraging thing for the applicant
to feel, even though he is sensible enough to realise that his case is
only one among many with which his adviser is dealing, and probably
not the most significant. Upon such a quality as this the success of
statesmen, lawyers, physicians largely depends. But where the dramatic
sense is combined with egotism, selfishness, and indifference to the
claims of others, it is a terrible inheritance. It ministers, as I have
said before, to its possessor's self-satisfaction; but on the other hand
it is a failing which goes so deep and which permeates so intimately the
whole moral nature, that its cure is almost impossible without the gift
of what the Scripture calls "a new heart." Such self-complacency is a
fearful shield against criticism, and particularly so because it gives
as a rule so few opportunities for any outside person, however intimate,
to expose the obliquity of such a temperament. The dramatic egotist is
careful as a rule not to let his egotism appear, but to profess to be,
and even to believe that he is, guided by the highest motives in all his
actions and words. A candid remonstrance is met by a calm tolerance, and
by the reply that the critic does not understand the situation, and
is trying to hinder rather than to help the development of beneficent
designs.

I used to know a man of this type, who was insatiably greedy of
influence and recognition. It is true that he was ready to help other
people with money or advice. He was wealthy, and of a good position; and
he would take a great deal of trouble to obtain appointments for friends
who appealed to him, or to unravel a difficult situation; though the
object of his diligence was not to help his applicants, but to obtain
credit and power for himself. He did not desire that they should be
helped, but that they should depend upon him for help. Nothing co