Human Despicableness

The exaggerated drive for power with which some children wish to assure their
prestige over their environment, soon forces them into an attitude of resistance
against the ordinary tasks and duties of everyday life. Compare such a power
hungry individual with the ideal social being, and one can, after some little
experience, specify, so to speak, his social index, that is, the degree to which he has
removed himself from his fellow man. A keen judge of human nature, keeping his
eyes open to the value of physical defects and inferiorities, knows nevertheless that
such character traits were impossible without antecedent difficulties in the
evolution of his soul.