Self-glorification

“ Are they afraid to go to such extremes? Ah, why then go in that direction at all, if only by such extremes the desired result can be obtained? It is humiliating to degrade one's-self; but is it not still more humiliating to degrade one's-self in vain? ”

“ Whether he had called it 'self-realisation' or any less ambiguous name, he would have come to the position that a man feels that he owes it to himself to strive for the best he knows, to 'do his duty for duty's sake,' that he must justify his thoughts and actions to himself—his unsophisticated self,—that, if not, he will feel remorse and guilt. ”

“ For indeed—I know what people are—if everything which is mean, dirty, and evil to-day, were to be declared by you to-morrow upright, pure, and good—all these snouts, without any effort of their own, would to-morrow be upright, pure, and good. One thing only would be necessary—the cowardice to annihilate self within themselves. ”

“ And as it is now unreasonable to term pity unselfish and seek to consecrate it, it is equally so to hand over a series of actions to the evil conscience, merely because they have been maligned as egotistical. What has happened in recent times in this connection is that the instinct of self-denial and self-sacrifice, everything altruistic, has been glorified as if it were the supreme value of morality. ”

“ It appears evident to my mind, at present, that we ought to consider whether an action be in itself good or bad, just or unjust, and totally to disregard both our own prejudices, and the prejudices of the world. Were I to pay false homage to wealth and rank, because the world tells me it is right that I should do so, and to neglect genius and virtue, which my judgment tells me would be an odious wrong, I should find but little satisfaction in the applause of the world, opposed to self-condemnation. ”

“ When the State came into existence—not by a social contract, as Rousseau and his contemporaries assumed—but by a frightful tyranny imposed by a conquering race upon a more numerous, but unorganised population, then all the latter's instinct of freedom turned inwards; its active force and will to power were directed against man himself. And this was the soil which bore such ideals of beauty as self-denial, self-sacrifice, unselfishness. The delight in self-sacrifice is in its origin a phase of cruelty; the bad conscience is a will for self-abuse. ”

“ But his revolt will always be in the name of judgment, not in the name of instinct.
All this philosophy of self-restraint can, it is true, be preached to healthy human beings only. It has no application to degenerates. Their defective brain and nervous system are not in a state to respond to its demands. ”

“ The seeds of the evil which now shot up had long been rooting themselves. Self–gratification had been the end, and his will the guide, of his actions; and on such persons uncontrolled power acts like a hot–bed, to draw up their bad qualities into tenfold rankness. ”

“ Are not your volitions and desires necessarily excited by objects or qualities totally independent of you?
81.
"If the actions of men are necessary, if men are not free, by what right does society punish criminals? Is it not very unjust to chastise beings, who could not act otherwise than they have done?" If the wicked act necessarily according to the impulses of their evil nature, society, in punishing them, acts necessarily by the desire of self-preservation. Certain objects necessarily produce in us the sensation of pain; our nature then forces us against them, and avert them from us. ”

“ Ultimately he destroys the capacity altogether, and with it vanishes even that for which he sinned, the capacity for pleasure itself. The poison of self-indulgence will slacken and corrupt every fibre of his moral and physical being. To grasp at pleasure indiscriminately, recklessly, greedily is a way that makes not for life but death. ”

“ It is only false strength that supports the personal will,—a false appearance of strength which might be called wilfulness and which leads ultimately to the destruction of its owner. Any true observer of human nature will recognize the weakness of mere selfish wilfulness in another, and will keep entirely free from its trammels by refusing to meet it in a spirit of resentment or retaliation.
Real self-control, as compared to repression, is delightful in its physical results, when we have any difficult experience to anticipate or to go through. ”

“ But if those who sought his destruction while he lived had had no greater faults than he, with better grace their modern representatives might indulge their genius for his defamation. At best, as we might suppose, it is the little men, the men of narrow range and narrow heart—men dwarfed by egotism, bigotry, and self-conceit—who see the most of these defects. Nobler minds, contemplating him from loftier standpoints, observe but little of them, and even honor them above the excellencies of common men. ”

“ What! is humanity itself in a state of degeneration? Has it always been in this state? One thing is certain, that ye are taught only the values of decadence as the highest values. The morality of self-renunciation is essentially the morality of degeneration; the fact, "I am going to the dogs," is translated into the imperative," Ye shall all go to the dogs"—and not only into the imperative. This morality of self-renunciation, which is the only kind of morality that has been taught hitherto, betrays the will to nonentity—it denies life to the very roots. ”

“ Therefore, if the law of God forbad any cruel excess in the chastising of persons who were guilty of crimes, much more did it disapprove that Men should unmercifully lash and flay themselves with rods and whip-cords. Indeed, the modern practice of lashing and whipping one’s self to the effusion of blood, is by no means intitled to our admiration. ”

“ We are a wincing mass of self-consciousness and corruption, within our plausible rind. The most unselfish, the most humanitarian of us all, he is the hollowest and fullest of rottenness. The more rotten we become, the more insistent and insane becomes our desire to ameliorate the conditions of our poorer, and maybe healthier neighbours.
Fools, vile fools! Why cannot we acknowledge and admit the horrible pulse and thresh of corruption within us. What is this self-consciousness that palpitates within us like a disease? ”

“ She was gnawed by that false fever which riots in those who seek by outward seemings and distinctions to console themselves for the want of their own self-esteem, or who, despising the world with which they are brought in contact, sigh for those worldly advantages which alone justify to the world itself their contempt. ”

“ But, if we watch the influence upon the will itself, of its own wrong decisions, its own yielding to temptations, we shall discover that the voluntary faculty may be ruined from within; may be made impotent to good by its own action; may surrender itself with such an intensity and entireness to appetite, passion, and self-love, that it becomes unable to reverse itself, and overcome its own wrong disposition and direction. ”

“ It concentrates terribly on repression, throwing up about itself temporary breastworks, developing cruel red rays of personal will which at best is but a defiant pugnacity. Its eyes grow red and voice savage. For the time the gargoyles of the ancient self are locked in the lower room, but they are not mastered. All personal will is but a confession of inordination within. Where there is inner order and beauty, it is not needed, becomes indeed an affront to the most high. ”

“ It is one of the evils of a course like his, that by the time it is run, the energy which might have shaped a new one is lost, and the self-deluded victim falls, too probably never again to rise. And then is such a course most miserable, when its slave is aware of his own degradation, repents and sins on, always harassed by self-contempt, never safe in self-reliance, always thinking of what he might have been, never remembering what he yet may be. ”

“ Where the body is enfeebled by the depressing influences of vitiated air and bodily defilement, the mind, almost of necessity, takes the same low, unhealthy tone. Self-respect is lost; a stupid, inert, languid feeling overpowers the system; the character becomes depraved; and too often—eager to snatch even a momentary enjoyment, to feel the blood bounding in the veins,—the miserable victim flies to the demon of strong drink for relief; hence misery, infamy, shame, crime, and wretchedness. ”

“ The collection of evil habits and desires, which before had no identity beside the feeling of self-assertion, is now thought of as one, and gets a general character. It does this of course by its antagonism to the good. The common point in all bad self-assertions, their opposition to good, is recognized, and in all these realizations the self knows it is bad. ”

“ I had imagined, and indeed I had convinced myself, that I was so schooled in adversity I could defy fortune. I thought that mere bodily privations and sufferings could never seriously affect me, and that, with the freedom of my own thoughts unfettered, no real slavery could oppress me. In this calculation I had forgotten to take count of those feelings of self-esteem which are our defences against the promptings of every mean ambition. ”

“ They are usually very superficial, insufficiently grounded, rather dependent upon accident; transitions from one extreme to the other make up the daily experiences of these individuals—from intense love to burning hatred, from deepest reverence to an irreconcilable disgust, from unshakable loyalty to brutal treachery. They lack energy and initiative, are undecided, vacillating, and inclined to self-reproach. ”

“ In the meantime, one cannot dispense with the Authorities, the criminals, or the scapegoats.
The ultimate justification for submission and self negation had been the function of the morality of ulterior aims and higher purposes. Ultimately, one never submitted, one never bowed or crawled, for the sake of the rewards. Ultimately one's self negation was a noble act of sacrifice and suffering; one degraded oneself for the sake of the family, for the sake of the children -so that they, too, might degrade themselves, suffer and sacrifice themselves for the sake of the Good and the Right. ”

“ An exploitation of one’s capacity for work which reaches the extent of mine involves, of course, the broadest self-denial in all other matters. One becomes a ploughshare that tears up the earth and rusts. Or one is like a burning substance, luminiferous but self-consumed. Marriage, family, friendship, art, nature—these things scarcely exist for me. I have lived like a miner in his shaft. And what thanks do I get? Demagogues tell those whom they delude that I am a vampire, who sucks the blood of the oppressed. ”

“ Thus actuated, I went the next day to the billiard-table which he had been accustomed to frequent; where I once more found him at play. He met me not only unabashed, but with something like cordiality. He had so accustomed himself to his own hypothesis, that 'self-gratification is the law of nature,' and had so confused a sense of what true self-gratification is, with such an active faculty of perverting facts and exhibiting pictures of general turpitude, that he had very little sense of the vice of his own conduct; and was therefore very little subject to self-reproof. ”

“ Equally painful is self-examination, for if the wretch be callous, the facts of psychology will not present themselves — if not, who could go on year after year in a perpetual process of deliberate self-torture and shame. ”

“ Nor let it be objected that these characters are remote from moral perfection, and that they can by no means be considered as edifying patterns for general imitation. Every epoch, under names more or less specious, has deified its peculiar errors; Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age: and Self-deceit is the veiled image of unknown evil, before which luxury and satiety lie prostrate. ”

“ For self-glorying, self-seeking, self-will is that which he will be continually dreading in himself, from which he will be continually flying in himself. He will know that that has been and is the cause of all falsehood in his words, his deeds, his thoughts; and therefore he will acknowledge that One in whom there is no such self-seeking, self-glorying, self-willing, who was entirely seeking the glory of another, and doing the will of another, must be true altogether, must be right altogether,—that there can be no falsehood, no wrong in Him. ”

“ How it happened that the vice which inevitably attaches itself to such conduct, self-evident, gross, and glaring as it is, fatal to private morals and public virtue, odious in its practice and hellish in its consequences, how the baneful complexion of this monster vice should at first so totally escape me is more than I can declare. Hurry of thought, confusion of intellect, and eagerness of passion are the only probable conjectures I can make. ”

“ It knows itself in them as self, because, in volition, it now asserts itself consciously; having willed them, it is aware that they are its will: and it knows itself in them as bad self, because, in the doing of them, the self was asserted in that very character. The particular evil act is done as an instance and case of evil; the general is realized as such in the particulars; and, when the particulars are reflected on, they possess within themselves, as their identity, the self-conscious assertion of the self, as the will which is bad and which knows itself bad. ”

“ Whether from a self-inquisitorial habit that he grew into from jealousy of the sins to which men of thought are liable, he has acquired, in disentangling and demonstrating that particular form of moral disease, an acumen which no conscience can resist. ”

“ Yes, it was trying to get her under, this world with its mighty self-satisfaction, with its smug rules of conduct, all made to be broken by those who strutted and preened themselves on being what they considered normal. They trod on the necks of those thousands of others who, for God knew what reason, were not made as they were; they prided themselves on their indignation, on what they proclaimed as their righteous judgments. ”