I have met both men and women of this apostolic kind, and one feels that they understand; that in their tranquil maturity they can make allowances for crude immaturity; that they do not at once dismiss one as being foolishly young or tiresomely elderly:  they have no subjects of their own which they are vexed at finding misunderstood or not comprehended.  They do not think the worse of a person for having preferences or prejudices; though when one has uttered a raw preference or an unreasonable prejudice in their presence one is ashamed, as one is for hurling a stone into a sleeping pool.  One comes away from them desiring to appreciate rather than to contemn, with horizons and vistas of true and beautiful things opening up on all sides, with a wish to know more and to understand more, and to believe more; with the sense of a desirable secret of which they have the possession.

One meets sometimes exactly the opposite of all this, a lively, brilliant, contemptuous specialist, who talks briskly and lucidly about his own subject, and makes one feel humble and clumsy and drowsy.  One sees that he is pleased to talk, and when the ball rolls to one’s feet, one makes a feeble effort to toss it back, whereupon he makes a fine stroke, with an ill-concealed contempt for a person who is so ill-informed.  Perhaps it is good to be humiliated thus; but it is not pleasant, and the worst of it is that one confuses the subject with the personality behind it, and thinks that the subject is dreary when it is only the personality that is repellent.

Such a man is repellent, because he is self-absorbed, conceited, contemptuous.  He has grown up inside a sort of walled fortress, and he thinks that everyone outside is a knave or a fool.  He has not changed.  It is this change, this progress of the soul that is adorable.

The question for most of us—­a sad question too—­is whether this change, this progress, is attainable, or whether a power of growth is given to some people and denied to others.  I am afraid that this is partially true.  A good many people seem to be born inside a hard carapace which cannot expand; and it protects them from the sensitive apprehension of injury and hurt, which is in reality the only condition of growth.  If we feel our failures, if we see, every now and then, how unjustly, unkindly, perversely we have behaved, we try to be different next time.  Perhaps the motive is not a very high one, because it is to avoid similar suffering; but we improve a little and a little.

Of course, occasionally, one meets people who have not changed much, because they started on so high a plane—­it is commoner to find this among women than among men; they have begun life tender, loyal, unselfish; it has always been a greater happiness to see that people round them are pleased than to find their own satisfaction.  Such people are often what the world calls ineffective, because they have no selfish object to attain.  I have a friend