Yet the man who is thus possessed is not conscious of any diminution of his individuality, any reduction of personal power or prowess: he does not discern from it any closing in of that round horizon to which first his spirit was heir. For that by which he is possessed fills him with such a pressure of emotion--its dynamic forces within him are so strong, that he may actually imagine his personality to be thereby not diminished but enlarged, and may (by reason of the violence with which this distemper discharges itself on others) be cheated into the belief that thus he secures for himself a broader base, raising his life to a higher level of consciousness, instead of what actually is the truth, turning it to consumption and waste--not opening his senses to new joys but shutting them in; sharpening them indeed like teeth, but closing them together with springs made not for expansion but for contraction, so that they act like a trap destructive of the very life they would control. And as with individual men, so with nations. “Would you know a man,” said the Greek oracle, “give him power.” But that, though sure as a test of others, is no sure means for enabling a man to know himself. Power all down the ages has been the arch-deceiver of mankind. Power which has set itself on great possessions has brought disinheritance to the human race. We do not know what humanity might be--how fair, how lovely, and of what good report--that great beatific vision is still hidden from our eyes--mainly because we have interpreted power in terms of possession; and, forcing others to go without, in order that we ourselves may possess, we stand to-day immeasurably poorer and weaker than we should have been had we interpreted our power and our possessions differently. For centuries of time (so long, indeed, as history records anything) the leading nations of the world have gone out to conquer other nations and to possess them. And how have they done so?--mainly by depriving them of their liberty, by reducing their power of initiative, by undermining and warping their racial characteristics. How much has not that impoverished the history of the world and the real wealth of nations? For people living in subservience or subjection, accepting and not rebelling against it, breed less nobly as a consequence--they fail, then, to produce great minds or to express themselves greatly in the arts. Their life-potency is diminished; and we, holding them upon those terms, are owners of a property which we squander by our very mode of possessing it.