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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: delight in the little world where he moved. He had the artistic
temperament in its most primitive and naive form. Nothing pleased
him so much as the act of pleasing. Music was the means which
Nature had given him to fulfil this desire. He played, as you might
say, out of a certain kind of selfishness, because he enjoyed making
other people happy. He was selfish enough, in his way, to want the
pleasure of making everybody feel the same delight that he felt in
the clear tones, the merry cadences, the tender and caressing flow
of his violin. That was consolation. That was power. That was
success.
And especially was he selfish enough to want to feel his ability to
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