Having given his self-abasing impulse free rein, he is now in a position to exploit his self-regard. He has made himself right with the weak and slavish. He has fortified himself with their alliance. He now satisfies his self-regard by becoming proud of his humility and enjoining it on others. If it were self-control alone that made the puritan, he would not be as powerful as he is. Indeed he would be no more than the mild ascetic, who is all abnegation because his self-regarding mechanism is weak. But in the puritan both impulses are strong. It is control over others that yields him his satisfactions of power. He may stamp out his sex-desire, but his impulse to shatter ideas that he does not like will flourish wild and wanton. To the true puritan the beauty of unselfishness lies in his being able to enforce it on others. He loves virtue not so much for its own sake as for its being an instrument of his terrorism. The true puritan is at once the most unselfish and the most self-righteous of men. There is nothing he will not do for you, give up for you, suffer for you. But at the same time there is no cranny of your world that he will not illuminate with the virtue of this doing of his. His real satisfaction comes not from his action of benevolence but from the moral of the tale. He need not boast about his renunciation or his altruism. But in any true puritan atmosphere that pride will be prevalent. Indeed, it is the oxygen of that atmosphere. Wherever you come across that combination of selfless devotion with self-righteousness, you have the essence of the puritan. Should you come across the one without the other you would find not the puritan but the saint.