The possessive impulses, when they are strong, infect activities which ought to be purely creative.  A man who has made some valuable discovery may be filled with jealousy of a rival discoverer.  If one man has found a cure for cancer and another has found a cure for consumption, one of them may be delighted if the other man’s discovery turns out a mistake, instead of regretting the suffering of patients which would otherwise have been avoided.  In such cases, instead of desiring knowledge for its own sake, or for the sake of its usefulness, a man is desiring it as a means to reputation.  Every creative impulse is shadowed by a possessive impulse; even the aspirant to saintliness may be jealous of the more successful saint.  Most affection is accompanied by some tinge of jealousy, which is a possessive impulse intruding into the creative region.  Worst of all, in this direction, is the sheer envy of those who have missed everything worth having in life, and who are instinctively bent on preventing others from enjoying what they have not had.  There is often much of this in the attitude of the old toward the young.

There is in human beings, as in plants and animals, a certain natural impulse of growth, and this is just as true of mental as of physical development.  Physical development is helped by air and nourishment and exercise, and may be hindered by the sort of treatment which made Chinese women’s feet small.  In just the same way mental development may be helped or hindered by outside influences.  The outside influences that help are those that merely provide encouragement or mental food or opportunities for exercising mental faculties.  The influences that hinder are those that interfere with growth by applying any kind of force, whether discipline or authority or fear or the tyranny of public opinion or the necessity of engaging in some totally incongenial occupation.  Worst of all influences are those that thwart or twist a man’s fundamental impulse, which is what shows itself as conscience in the moral sphere; such influences are likely to do a man an inward danger from which he will never recover.

Those who realize the harm that can be done to others by any use of force against them, and the worthlessness of the goods that can be acquired by force, will be very full of respect for the liberty of others; they will not try to bind them or fetter them; they will be slow to judge and swift to sympathize; they will treat every human being with a kind of tenderness, because the principle of good in him is at once fragile and infinitely precious.  They will not condemn those who are unlike themselves; they will know and feel that individuality brings differences and uniformity means death.  They will wish each human being to be as much a living thing and as little a mechanical product as it is possible to be; they will cherish in each one just those things which the harsh usage of a ruthless world would destroy.  In one word, all their dealings with others will be inspired by a deep impulse of reverence.