All human activity is prompted by desire. There is a wholly fallacious
theory advanced by some earnest moralists to the effect that it is
possible to resist desire in the interests of duty and moral principle. I
say this is fallacious, not because no man ever acts from a sense of
duty, but because duty has no hold on him unless he desires to be
dutiful. If you wish to know what men will do, you must know not only,
or principally, their material circumstances, but rather the whole
system of their desires with their relative strengths.
Love of power is closely akin to vanity, but it is not by any means the
same thing. What vanity needs for its satisfaction is glory, and it is
easy to have glory without power… Many people prefer glory to power, but
on the whole these people have less effect upon the course of events
than those who prefer power to glory… Power, like vanity, is insatiable.
Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely. And as it is
especially the vice of energetic men, the causal efficacy of love of
power is out of all proportion to its frequency. It is, indeed, by far
the strongest motive in the lives of important men.
Love of power is greatly increased by the experience of power, and this applies to petty power as well as to that of potentates.
In any autocratic regime, the holders of power become increasingly
tyrannical with experience of the delights that power can afford. Since
power over human beings is shown in making them do what they would
rather not do, the man who is actuated by love of power is more apt to
inflict pain than to permit pleasure.
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