Egoism

“ The great egoism of our dominating will insists on our completely shutting our eyes to ourselves, and on our appearing "impersonal," "disinterested"!—Oh to what a ridiculous degree we are the reverse of this! ”

“ Where the world comes in my way - and it comes in my way everywhere - I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but - my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of usableness, of utility, of use. ”

“ My absolute Ego is obviously not the Individual;—although this has been maintained by offended courtiers and chagrined philosophers in order to impute to me the scandalous doctrine of practical Egoism. ”

“ It comes in the guise of a purification of egoism, a complete renunciation of the limits of individuality—of all the desires and aims that seem to converge in the single personality—and a joyous acceptance of what has generally seemed an immense external Will now first dimly or clearly realized. ”

“ I sometimes amuse myself with the problem, How rich should I like to be, supposing that I were perfectly wise in that sense in which wisdom is compatible with thorough-going egoism, or with what is called enlightened self-interest? ”

“ We know how tenacious and durable is this passion in its numerous forms—the pursuit of power, honour, renown, riches; in it we have a foretaste of the stability of egoism after the ruin of all other tendencies. It disappears when the stage is reached when man sincerely declares himself disgusted with everything, and speaks like the author of Ecclesiastes. ”

“ And the passion that finds its expression in this rhetoric, the devotees of ethical science call egotism. But this egotism is the only true remedy for egoism, spiritual avarice, the vice of preserving and reserving oneself and of not striving to perennialize oneself by giving oneself. ”

“ And yet are there not two ways of seeking perfection, two paths clearly defined and well trodden throughout the ages—reform of self and reform of others? What may at first sight appear as æsthetic or mystic egoism is perhaps the better way. ”

“ Expressed morally, to love one's neighbour and to live for others and for other things may be the means of protection employed to maintain the hardest kind of egoism. This is the exceptional case in which I, contrary to my principle and conviction, take the side of the altruistic instincts; for here they are concerned in subserving selfishness and self-discipline. The whole surface of consciousness—for consciousness is a surface—must be kept free from any one of the great imperatives. Beware even of every striking word, of every striking attitude! ”

“ The conception which is, perhaps, most closely associated with Egoism is that denoted by the words ‘my own interest.’ The Egoist is the man who holds that a tendency to promote his own interest is the sole possible, and sufficient, justification of all his actions. But this conception of ‘my own interest’ plainly includes, in general, very much more than my own pleasure. It is, indeed, only because and in so far as ‘my own interest’ has been thought to consist solely in my own pleasure, that Egoists have been led to hold that my own pleasure is the sole good. ”

“ You know the many paintings of man transformed to rageing beast by the curse: and this, the fieriest trial of our egoism, worked in the Egoist to produce division of himself from himself, a concentration of his thoughts upon another object, still himself, but in another breast, which had to be looked at and into for the discovery of him. ”

“ For the egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief. ”

“ He is egoistic like other men, but with the purer or sattwic egoism which regards the moral law and society and the claims of others and not only or predominantly his own interests, desires and passions. ”

“ The one is inseparable from personal existence, the necessary point of departure of every conscious action, whose activity and whose end are alike in the object outside of the self; the other is that egoism which directs both the action and its end toward itself. ”

“ I distinguish, of course, between egotism, which is an English word of long standing, and egoism, which was, I believe, somewhat recently introduced by moralists to designate, in antithesis to altruism, certain theories or facts of ethics. ”

“ A new principle of altruism (as it is now fashionable to call it) was added to the old principle of egoism, in small proportions at first, but gradually increasing in strength as humanity' is developed. ”

“ There is no word more generally misinterpreted than the word egoism, in its modern sense. In the first place, it is supposed to mean devotion to self interest, without regard to the interest of others. It is thus opposed to altruism — devotion to others and sacrifice of self. ”

“ The Natural Value of Egoism.—Selfishness has as much value as the physiological value of him who practises it: its worth may be great, or it may be worthless and contemptible. Every individual may be classified according to whether he represents the ascending or the descending line of life. ”

“ CHAPTER XIX So continued our Lord, wandering from place to place, or resting in the season of the rains in the monasteries provided by the supporters of the Brotherhood, and, followed by his own, he taught the Breaking of the Fetters—and the fetters he broke are these:
The delusion of self—namely that the individual ego is real and self-existent. For what can exist outside the Universal Self? And egoism is the very root of death. ”

“ If this be an ordered selfishness, then we should pause before we condemn any one for the vice of egoism, for there may be deeper roots for its causes than we have knowledge of. ”

“ The view which regards Ethics as explicable by Egoism is a very imperfect and ambiguous one. For what is the Ego spoken of, and of what does it consist? The view which makes egoism the rule of life, and which some suppose may afford the ultimate rationale of Ethics, is identical with the biological view which we have already discussed. ”

“ What a confusion worse confounded must be our present motives, and of what a chaos of thought and emotion must the human intellect consist! The origin of any such argument as this, intended to disprove the theory of a derivation of altruism from egoism, is probably in the failure to distinguish the fact that both altruism and egoism, as we know them, are comparative, not absolute. ”

“ Hence upon this depends the great difference between what each one necessarily is in his own eyes and what he is in the eyes of others, consequently the egoism with which every one reproaches every one else. ”

“ From the dawn of life, then, egoism has been dependent upon altruism as altruism has been dependent upon egoism, and in the course of evolution the reciprocal services of the two have been increasing. ”

“ The study of psychology, and more particularly of psychoanalysis, has torn aside the cloaks that our egoism wears, and has shown that when we think we are being unselfish, this is hardly ever in fact the case. ”

“ Each man for himself in that desert of egoism which is called life." ”

“ If arrested growth is the chief source of [279] malignant egoism, there is an obvious remedy for the deadly malady. The egoist must re-enter the path of self-realisation. His great enemy is his lower self ”

“ It is assumed that throughout the entire history of mankind material and intellectual development has never attained to such colossal proportions. It is evident that our egoism has obscured our normal vision. ”

“ That your egoism may not get the better of you in the start and bias you before reading my talk, I will frankly say that there is hardly a person living to-day who is either regular, cleanly, temperate, moral, or self-controlled. ”

“ And hence it comes about that both the cynic and the idealist can make out plausible cases, when they seek to show that either egoism or altruism predominates in human life. Both are right in a partial sense. ”

“ That they so stoutly resist all philosophies and movements which have these ends primarily in view is convincing evidence of the fierce and jealous egoism which animates their so plausibly altruistic spirit. ”

“ One's modesty; the fact that one has not lent an ear to one's most individual needs; the fact that one has mistaken one's self; the fact that one has esteemed one's self low; the fact that one has lost all delicacy of hearing in regard to one's instincts.—This want of reverence in regard to one's self is avenged by all sorts of losses: in health, friendship, well-being, pride, cheerfulness, freedom, determination, courage. A man never forgives himself, later on, for this want of genuine egoism: he regards it as an objection and as a cause of doubt concerning his real ego. ”

“ First, the egoist calls life a war without mercy, and then he takes the greatest possible trouble to drill his enemies in war. To preach egoism is to practise altruism. ”

“ The later developments of the desires, the newer social ends, are as much higher as the human species is higher than the species from which it has been evolved through continued adaptation. As, in the [Pg 453] attainment of altruism, egoism is not lost in the sense that the individual no longer seeks that which is most pleasurable to him, but simply reaches a higher plane, so the fundamental animal desires and instincts still move us, but in a quite different form, being closely interwoven, in their later development, with all the ideals and aspirations with which social life has supplied us. ”

“ How much confusion of thought comes from our interest in self, and from our vanity when thinking 'I am so great,' or 'I have done this wonderful deed?' The thought of thine ego stands between thy rational nature and truth; banish it, and then wilt thou see things as they are. He who thinks correctly will rid himself of ignorance and acquire wisdom. ”

“ Here, what I want is known to me by virtue of its contrast with what another wants, and this contrast, rendering relatively clear my consciousness of my own intent, tends, by its very existence, and by reason of the blindness of my passion, to inflame the opposition. In a more benign, but also, as I judge, in even a more primitive form, appears the simple contrast of ego and non-ego in all my imitative, or explicitly plastic and socially submissive, states of consciousness. ”

“ When we speak of the ego, do we mean the self of to-day, or of yesterday, or of some years back—or possibly some years in the future when we shall have found the expression now unhappily denied us? Do we mean the self of boyhood, or even of babyhood? or do we mean that of maturity, or of old age? Do we mean the self indicated by the mind alone, or by the spirit, apart from the body? ”

“ Moreover, if our ego remains, how can we attain true deliverance? If the ego is to be reborn in any of the three worlds, be it in hell, upon earth, or be it even in heaven, we shall meet again and again the same inevitable doom of sorrow. We shall remain chained to the wheel of individuality and shall be implicated in egotism and wrong. ”

“ Of the ego itself nothing more can be said than that it is the thought of me as the subject of all experience, willing, and action, and if we try to take hold of it nothing more than this formula remains. Yet the fact that the ego is the subject of all this, gives conduct, will, and experience that peculiar character which distinguishes them from mere action and reaction. For it is directly certain that all the psychical contents are not only co-existences in one consciousness but that they are possessed by it. ”

“ The prevalence of this obvious preference which we feel for everything of our own is indeed striking. Does it not look as if our dear Ego must first lend its color and flavor to anything in order to make it please us?... Is it not the simplest explanation for all these phenomena, so consistent among themselves, to suppose that the Ego, the self, which forms the origin and centre of our thinking life, is at the same time the original and central object of our life of feeling, and the ground both of whatever special ideas and of whatever special feelings ensue? ”

“ In so far as something is considered as the reality of the non-ego, the ego is considered as passive, and, on the other hand, in so far as ‘I’ am real, the object is passive; this relation, that the passivity of the object is my activity or reality, and the opposite, is the conception of Causality. “As many parts of negation as the ego posits in itself, so many parts of reality it posits in the non-ego; it therefore posits itself as self-determining in so far as it is determined, and as suffering determination in so far as it determines itself. ”

“ What is the one feature present in all our knowledge,—the common point in which all our cognitions unite and agree,—the element in which they are identical? The ego is this feature, point, or element: it is the common centre which is at all times known, and in which all our cognitions, however diverse they may be in other respects, are known as uniting and agreeing; and besides the ego, or oneself, there is no other identical quality in our cognitions—as any one may convince himself upon reflection. ”

“ I repeat, by my ideal I learn to know myself as one self, with one contrast that runs through all the endlessly varying contrasts of ego and non-ego. Surely no teacher needs to be reminded that one common name for all these motives that tend towards unity of selfhood and of character in a growing mind is: Whatever tends to give one’s life the unity of a conscious plan. A sane self-consciousness involves a more or less clearly defined ideal of conduct, such as can be central in all the processes that tend to bring the special contrasts between ego and non-ego into sight. ”