The consequences of the social self-discipline which I have outlined will be various.  A fairly early 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.

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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 the difficulty of choosing a present that will suit a friend.  Certainly it will not be necessary, from sheer indifference and ignorance, to invite the friend to choose his own present.  On the contrary, one will be, in secret, so intimate with the friend’s situation and wants and desires, that sundry rival schemes for pleasuring him will at once offer themselves.  And when he receives the present finally selected,