of genuine surrender to him, you can win more of his esteem and
gratitude than five hundred pounds would buy. His notion of real
goodwill is the imaginative sharing of his feelings, a convinced
participation in his pains and pleasures. He is well aware that, if you
honestly do this, you will be on his side.

* * * * *

Now, adults, of course, are tremendously clever and accomplished persons
and children are no match for them; but still, with all their talents
and omniscience and power, adults seem to lack important pieces of
knowledge which children possess; they seem to forget, and to fail to
profit by, their infantile experience. Else why should adults in general
be so extraordinarily ignorant of the great truth that the secret of
goodwill lies in the sympathetic exercise of the imagination? Since
goodwill is the secret of human happiness, it follows that the secret
of goodwill must be one of the most precious aids to sensible living;
and yet adults, though they once knew it, have gone and forgotten it!
Children may well be excused for concluding that the ways of the adult,
in their capricious irrationality, are past finding out.

To increase your goodwill for a fellow creature, it is necessary to
imagine that you are he: and nothing else is necessary. This feat is not
easy; but it can be done. Some people have less of the divine faculty of
imagination than others, but nobody is without it, and, like all other
faculties, it improves with use, just as it deteriorates with neglect.
Imagination is a function of the brain. In order to cultivate goodwill
for a person, you must think frequently about that person. You must
inform yourself about all his activities. You must be able in your
mind's eye to follow him hour by hour throughout the day, and you must