The puritan then gets the satisfaction of his will to power through the turning of his self-abasement into purposes of self-regard. Renunciation is the raw material for his positive sense of power. The puritan gets his satisfaction exactly where the most carnal of natural men gets his, out of the stimulation of his pride. And in a world where renunciation has to happen to us whether we want it or not, the puritan is in the most impressive strategic position. In economy of energy he has it all over the head that is bloody but unbowed. For the puritan is so efficient morally that he can bow his head and yet exact control both out of the bowing and out of the prestige which his bowing gives him, as well as out of the bowing which he can enforce on others. The true puritan must become an evangelist. It is not enough to renounce the stimulus to satisfaction which is technically known as a “temptation.” The renouncing must be made into an ideal, the ideal must be codified, promulgated, and, in the last analysis, enforced. In the compelling of others to abstain, you have the final glut of puritanical power. For in getting other people to renounce a thing you thereby get renewed justification for your own renouncing. And so the puritan may go on inexhaustibly rolling up his satisfactions, one impulse reinforcing the other. The simultaneous play of these two apparently inconsistent personal impulses makes the puritan type one of the stablest in society. While the rest of us are longing for power the puritan is enjoying his. And because the puritan is so well integrated he almost always rules. The person whose satisfactions of control are more various and more refined is on the defensive against him. The puritan gets his sense of power not in the harmless way of the artist or the philosopher or the lover or the scientist, but in a crude assault on that most vulnerable part of other people’s souls, their moral sense. He is far more dangerous to those he converts than to those he intimidates. For he first scares them into abandoning the rich and sensuous and expressive impulses in life, and then teaches them to be proud of having done so. We all have the potentiality of the puritan within us. I remember suffering agonies at the age of ten because my aunt used to bring me candy that had been wickedly purchased on the Sabbath day. I forget whether I ate it or not, but that fact is irrelevant. What counted was the guilt with which the whole universe seemed to be stained. I need no other evidence of the irrational nature of morality than this fact that children can be such dogged little puritans, can be at the age of ten so sternly and intuitively righteous.