318 PSYCHOLOGY. 



called imselfisli if lie shows consideration for tlie interests of 

 other selves than his own. Now what is the intimate nature 

 of the selfish emotion in him ? and what is the primary 

 ohject of its regard ? We have described him piirsuing and 

 fostering as his self first one set of things and then another; 

 we have seen the same set of facts gain or lose interest in his 

 eyes, leave him indifierent, or fill him either with triumph 

 or despair according as he made pretensions to appropriate 

 them, treated them as if they were potentially or actually 

 parts of himself, or not. We knoAv how little it matters to 

 us whether some man, a man taken at large and in the 

 abstract, prove a failure or succeed in life, — he may be 

 hanged for aught we care, — but we know the utter momen- 

 tousness and terribleness of the alternative when the man 

 is the one whose name we ourselves bear, /must not be 

 a failure, is the very loudest of the voices that clamor in 

 each of our breasts : let fail who may, / at least must suc- 

 ceed. Now the first conclusion which these facts suggest 

 is that each of us is animated by a (Ured feeling of regard 

 for his oivn pure principle of ificlividual existence, whatever 

 that may be, taken merely as such. It appears as if all our 

 concrete manifestations of selfishness might be the conclu- 

 sions of as many syllogisms, each with this principle as the 

 subject of its major premiss, thus : Whatever is me is 

 precious ; this is me ; therefore this is precious ; w^hatever 

 is mine must not fail ; this is mine ; therefore this must 

 not fail, etc. It appears, I say, as if this principle inocu- 

 lated all it touched w4th its own intimate quality of worth; 

 as if, previous to the touching, everything might be matter 

 of indiiTerence, and nothing interesting in its own right ; as 

 if my regard for my own body even were an interest not 

 simply in this body, but in this body only so far as it is 

 mine. 



But what is this abstract numerical principle of identity, 



dinate himself to otliers as the best means to his end; and in this case he is 

 very apt to pass for a disinterested man. If it be the ' other-worldly ' self 

 which he seeks, and if he seeks it ascetically, — even though he would 

 rather see all mankind damned eternally than lose his individual soul.-^ 

 ' saintliness ' will probably be the name by which his selfishness will be 

 called. 



