Disinterestedness

“ In regard to interest in the most extended, which is the original and only strictly proper sense of the word disinterested, no human act has ever been or ever can be disinterested.... In the only sense in which disinterestedness can with truth be predicated of human actions, it is employed ... ”

“ NATURAL DISINTERESTEDNESS OF THE HUMAN MIND It is the design of the following Essay to shew that the human mind is naturally disinterested, or that it is naturally interested in the welfare of others in the same way, and from the same direct motives, by which we are impelled to the pursuit of our own interest. ”

“ To great clearness of intellect, large powers of comprehension, and intuitive female sagacity, ripened by the constant necessity of independent action, she added that heroic disinterestedness which naturally loses all consciousness of self in the prosecution of a great object. ”

“ The sole fact that we demand unselfishness in action assures us that the standard of enlightened self-interest is false. And, indeed, if we consult the opinions of men where they are least likely to be warped by sophistry, we shall find that disinterestedness is the universal criterion by which moral worth is measured. ”

“ There is one further application of the principle of disinterestedness, which goes beyond classes and instances such as I have mentioned, and embraces men simply as fellow-men. Much has been said among us of late years, and none too much, of the dangers of an extreme individualism. ”

“ Eventually, however, one of us may secure the right; but there is many a slip, you know, and perhaps it would be less awkward afterward if a person whose disinterestedness is quite above suspicion had had the direction of affairs from the first. ”

“ The excess of humanity and disinterested [53] ness in polite society, the desire not to give pain, for example, not to talk of your own diseases and misfortunes, and to introduce nothing but what will give pleasure, destroy all humanity and disinterestedness, by making it intolerable, through desuetude, to listen to the complaints of our equals, or of any, where the listening does not gratify or excite some vicious pride and sense of superiority. ”

“ In considering other people’s interests as well as your own.—“Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others” (ver. 4) . The truly humble are thoroughly disinterested. The work of the meek and lowly Jesus is the loftiest example of disinterestedness. ”

“ He had thought himself, so long as nobody knew, the most disinterested person in the world, carrying his concentrated burden, his perpetual suspense, ever so quietly, holding his tongue about it, giving others no glimpse of it nor of its effect upon his life, asking of them no allowance and only making on his side all those that were asked. ”

“ You're the only disinterested man I've ever met or, to judge from what I've seen of the world, I'm ever likely to meet. Haven't you kept away from me in spite of your feelings? Haven't you even tried to make me listen to another man—a man not worthy to black your boots? ”

“ They are addicted to an inveterate habit of littleness and perversity, which rejects every other motive to action or object of contemplation but the daily, teasing, contemptible, familiar, favourite sources of uneasiness and dissatisfaction. ”

“ Can I yield without a struggle to the strange fascination you exert upon my mind? What interest can you have in me, a stranger, that you should thus dictate to me the gravest action in the life of man? ”

“ So you actually imagined that by one or two out of every hundred you might be considered passable. You are the most uninteresting person in the world. You are small and nasty and bad, and every other thing that’s abominable. ”

“ For the sake of this cowardly keeping up of appearances, I’ve filled the house with people I dislike, I’ve had to listen to and learn their empty, meaningless, surface-clever talk—to lead their artificial, unnatural life. ”

“ The perceptions as well as the senses may be improved to our own disquiet, and we may, by diligent cultivation of the powers of dislike, raise in time an artificial fastidiousness, which shall fill the imagination with phantoms of turpitude, shew us the naked skeleton of every delight, and present us only with the pains of pleasure, and the deformities of beauty. ”

“ The dependant who cultivates delicacy in himself, very little consults his own tranquillity. My unhappy vigilance is every moment discovering some petulance of accent, or arrogance of mien, some vehemence of interrogation, or quickness of reply, that recals my poverty to my mind, and which I feel more acutely, as I know not how to resent it. ”

“ Now that the praise of the "disinterested person" is so popular one must--probably not without some danger--get an idea of WHAT people actually take an interest in, and what are the things generally which fundamentally and profoundly concern ordinary men--including the cultured, even the learned, and perhaps philosophers also, if appearances do not deceive. ”

“ Therefore, to those who are shocked to hear virtue spoken of as disinterested, it may be allowed, that it is indeed absurd to speak thus of it; unless hatred, several particular instances of vice, and all the common affections and aversions in mankind, are acknowledged to be disinterested too. ”

“ I have therefore frequently looked with wonder, and now and then with pity, at the thoughtlessness with which some alienate from themselves the affections of all whom chance, business, or inclination, brings in their way. When we see a man pursuing some darling interest, without much regard to the opinion of the world, we justly consider him as corrupt and dangerous, but are not long in discovering his motives ”

“ But it is further true that the judgment of the disinterested will be more worthy and helpful if in the conduct of their own affairs the disinterested have habituated themselves to scrupulous honesty of thought and action. ”

“ Whatever may be the manner in which we first acquire disinterested feelings, I do not think that much good can be done by tracing these feelings back again to a selfish origin, and leaving virtue no other basis to rest upon than a principle of refined self-interest, by setting on foot a sort of game at hide-and-seek between the reasons and motives to virtue. ”

“ Yet defeat and rejection might cover me with certain ridicule, leaving the stings of wounded self-esteem to rankle all the deeper, by thrusting the partial disparity of our relative positions in society more unpleasantly and humiliatingly before me and the world; for there is a snobbery in rank that is only equalled by the snobbery of wealth, and here I might have both to encounter. ”

“ The people do not interest me; I avoid them, and must appear in their eyes even more deluded than I am to come to this secluded spot at this unseasonable moment and be satisfied with my own society—no, not my own society, but that of these kind brotherly mountains. ”

“ We all hope for them, do we not? In various minor ways at least, and even in some public and large ways, they exist. But how about self-interest, cold, savage and yet constructive if feverish self-interest? ”

“ I have seen men who, in the ordinary affairs of life, were cool and level headed, grow suspicious and jealous, give up interest in everything, neglect their business, sometimes even neglect their families ”

“ I replied; “only you haven’t my dreadful boldness of mind, and you keep back, out of timidity and modesty and delicacy, even the impression that, in the past, when you had, without my aid, to flounder about in silence, most of all made you miserable. ”

“ Who actually cares, in the long run, whether you are good, bad or indifferent? There is much talk and much strutting to and fro and much concealment of our past ills and shames, and much parading of our present luxuries and well beings. ”

“ For what analysis will ever disengage and measure the ingredient of personal vanity which enters into and combines with disinterested enthusiasm in all public exhibitions of extravagant and unusual forms of devout emotion? ”

“ What must my feelings be on finding rough and rude manners, glaring folly, and the basest selfishness apparent in almost every public transaction! They are not always successful, it is true; but is it not dreadful to find them in such a place? ”

“ I cannot tell how it comes to pass, that society oppresses me; that the forms of politeness are disagreeable to me—that what people talk about does not interest me,—that all that they show to me is either quite indifferent, or else produces quite an opposite impression to what they expect. When I am shown a drawing or painting of any beautiful spot, immediately a feeling of disquiet arises within me which is utterly inexpressible. ”

“ But upon closer acquaintance one could not fail to detect disappointing lines in his face, and corresponding flaws in his character—a shifty eye, a weak mouth and chin, an indolent, ease-loving temperament, that would shirk every responsibility, and an insatiable desire for personal entertainment, that betrayed excessive selfishness and a lack of principle. ”

“ For much of this they are disqualified by the delicacy of their training and habits, and the still more disabling delicacy which pervades their conceptions and feelings; and from much they are excluded by their necessary inexperience of the realities they might wish to describe—by their substantial and incurable ignorance of business—of the way in which serious affairs are actually managed—and the true nature of the agents and impulses that give movement and direction to the stronger currents of ordinary life. ”

“ I am what they call 'difficult' I know,—I do not like 'society' or its amusements, which to me seem very vulgar and senseless,—I do not like its conversation, which I find excessively banal and often coarse—I cannot set my soul on tennis or golf or bridge—so I'm quite an 'outsider.' But I'm not sorry!—I should not care to be INside the human menagerie. ”

“ A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. ”

“ One of the first requisites, in order to be thus acceptable, is the neglect, the forgetfulness of self—a readiness to put self in the back-ground. Any obtrusion of self, any appearance of self-love, self-interest, self-conceit, or self-applause, tends to expose a man to dislike, perhaps to contempt. ”

“ The fact thereby becomes obvious that the greater part of what interests and charms higher natures, and more refined and fastidious tastes, seems absolutely "uninteresting" to the average man—if, notwithstanding, he perceive devotion to these interests, he calls it desinteresse, and wonders how it is possible to act "disinterestedly." ”

“ You know I never flatter; but you are so disinterested, always thinking about other people, always so kindly busy where you can be of any use; so unlike the world in general, in short, that it quite spoils one for living in it. ”

“ Setting him up as the glass through which to view the groups around him, we are not the less moved to a hearty detestation of the social vices they exhibit, and pre-eminently of selfishness in all its forms, because we see more plainly than ever that there is but one vice which is quite irremediable. ”

“ "but unsatisfied social aspirations are a bad and ugly business. We must certainly accept, and we will." ”

“ Who are those then, that find themselves so neglected? none but the bad and incapable; such who from want of ability, and by their bad behaviour, have made themselves unworthy of all attention; these are the men, who accuse Fortune of partiality; and the angry and discontented people being very numerous, they make such a noise with their complaints, that the cries vociferated from their vitiated breasts, seem like the clamours of all the world. ”

“ “I am only sure that I know perfectly where your interests lie—sentimentalists have words: love, loyalty, friendship, enmity, jealousy, hate, a thousand others; a waste of words—one word defines them all: self-interest. ”

“ Our social insolences, our irritating manners, our censorious judgment, our venomous letters, our pin pricks in conversation, are all forms of deliberate unkindness, and are all evidences of an ill-conditioned nature. ”

“ The displayers of them, in their impatient haste to catch the pennies of the public, or admiration, or whatever they might be desiring, were presenting, raw, confused and unimagined, their own unfelt and uncogitated experience, or, sometimes, an extension of their experience, in which, by an appalling logic, while they limned life as they would like to live it, they were led to the limits of unreason and egoistic folly. ”

“ Their unreasonableness, their inconsiderateness, their irritability, their singular gleams of insight, their exuberant energy of righteous vituperation, the curious irregularities of their minds,—however personally alien one may happen to find such qualities,—can never fail to interest and delight. ”

“ Every one has surely felt, some time or other in life, the insufferable annoyance of having his thoughts and reflections interfered with, and broken in upon by the vulgar impertinence and egotism of some "bore," who, mistaking your abstraction for attention and your despair for delight, inflicts upon you his whole life and adventures, when your own immediate destinies are perhaps vacillating in the scale. ”