longing—almost as deep, almost as imperious, as the desire for food or sleep— which is seldom gratified. It is what Freud calls “the desire to be great.” It is what Dewey calls the “desire to be important.” Lincoln once began a letter saying: “Everybody likes a compliment.” William James said: "The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated." He didn’t speak, mind you, of the “wish” or the “desire” or the “longing” to be appreciated. He said the "craving” to be appreciated. Here is a gnawing and unfaltering human hunger, and the rare individual who honestly satisfies this heart hunger will hold people in the palm of his or her hand and “even the undertaker will be sorry when he dies.” The desire for a feeling of importance is one of the chief distinguishing differences between mankind and the animals. To illustrate: When I was a farm boy out in Missouri, my father bred fine Duroc-Jersey hogs and . pedigreed white-faced cattle. We used to exhibit our hogs and white-faced cattle at the country fairs and live- stock shows throughout the Middle West. We won first prizes by the score. My father pinned his blue ribbons on a sheet of white muslin, and when friends or visitors came to the house, he would get out the long sheet of muslin. He would hold one end and I would hold the other while he exhibited the blue ribbons. The hogs didn’t care about the ribbons they had won. But Father did. These prizes gave him a feeling of importance. If our ancestors hadn’t had this flaming urge for a feeling of importance, civilization would have been impossible. Without it, we should have been just about like animals. It was this desire for a feeling of importance that led an uneducated, poverty- stricken grocery clerk to study some law books he found in the bottom of a barrel of household plunder that he had bought for fifty cents. You have probably heard of this grocery clerk. His name was Lincoln. It was this desire for a feeling of importance that inspired Dickens to write his immortal novels. This desire inspired Sir Christoper Wren to design his symphonies in stone. This desire made Rockefeller amass millions that he never spent! And this same desire made the richest family in your town build a house far too large for its
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