When an underling, for whom one has no admiration, does well, one flatters him.  One does this to encourage his productive behavior.  This includes children and even ‘superiors’ who are superior in name but not in spirit.  ‘Now I admire my children,’ you object.  No, you don’t – you love them, you cherish them, but you don’t admire them – you can’t admire them until they are able to teach you, until you recognize that they have developed something which you lack.*  That is the foundation of admiration – the acknowledgement of some talent devoid or undeveloped in oneself in another.

The second form of flattery is for those one admires.  When someone does something that we cannot, through pleasure or fear, we flatter them.  This form of flattery is rather like an expression of love – it is ingratiating and even supplicating, it is an expression of humility presented as awe.

It is amazing how clearly distinct the two are to the discriminating observer and I wonder that I have failed to explicitly recognize this until now – it goes a long way in explaining my past reception of flattery: I seem to have instinctually differentiated the two and always bristled against the first (at least when it was presented by someone I considered a peer) and warmed to the vulnerability of the second.

*and don’t think that you admire their innocence and purity –purity is nothing until it is sustained beside responsibility