Our friends we are to see in the light of these glorified sketches,—our friends and our enemies too. For only thus can we win them, and be essentially their benefactors. There is no power so irresistible, it has been said, as love. I do not quite accept the word Love. It signifies the feeling that goes with the ideal appreciation of others; and mere feeling supplies no directive rule of conduct. But it is true that the power of ideally appreciating others, of seeing them in the light of their possible best, and the feeling of love consequent on this vision, is the mightiest lever for transforming evil into good, and for sweetening the embittered lives of men. No greater boon can anyone receive from another than to be helped to think well of himself. Flattery is the base counterfeit of appreciation. Spiritual appreciation, appreciation of the inner self despite the mask, is the greatest of gifts, to manifest it is the greatest of arts. In its supreme form it is the art of going down to the lowest of human beings—the man in the ditch, the woman on the street—and making them think well of themselves because of possibilities in their nature they themselves hardly surmise. It is also the art of making the most developed and advanced human beings realize in themselves something still higher and better than they have ever reached. It is this art by which the supreme human benefactors have worked their spiritual miracles, and it is an art which to the extent of our ability we must each acquire and practice, if human society is to be redeemed. There are specially two points to be remembered: the one, that of seeing the unattained excellence in those who are already in the way of excellence; the other, where there is or seems to be a complete absence of fine qualities or of the promise of development, as in the case of backward children, that we should still not abate one jot of hope or effort, seeking to win even the smallest improvement, in the conviction that the best possible under the circumstances is incalculably worth while. For, compared with the infinite ideal even the achievements of the most advanced and most developed fall infinitely short, and what are they more than the best possible under the circumstances. The best possible under the circumstances represents for us the absolute best.