I now come to the actual method of cultivating goodwill.





SEVEN

THE GIFT OF ONESELF


Children divide their adult acquaintances into two categories--those who
sympathise with them in the bizarre and trying adventure called life;
and those who don't. The second category is much the larger of the two.
Very many people belong to it who think that they belong to the first.
They may deceive themselves, but they cannot deceive a child. Although
you may easily practise upon the credulity of a child in matters of
fact, you cannot cheat his moral and social judgment. He will add you
up, and he will add anybody up, and he will estimate conduct, upon
principles of his own and in a manner terribly impartial. Parents have
no sterner nor more discerning critics than their own children.

And so you may be polite to a child, and pretend to appreciate his point
of view; but, unless you really do put yourself to the trouble of
understanding him, unless you throw yourself, by the exercise of
imagination, into his world, you will not succeed in being his friend.
To be his friend means an effort on your part, it means that you must
divest yourself of your own mental habit, and, for the time being, adopt
his. And no nice phrases, no gifts of money, sweets or toys, can take
the place of this effort, and this sacrifice of self. With five minutes