324 rSYClIOLOGY. 



more subtle still. All miuds must have come, by the way 

 of the survival of the fittest, if by no directer path, to take 

 au iutense interest in the bodies to which they are yoked, 

 altogether apart from any interest in the pure Ego which 

 they also possess. 



And similarly with the images of their person in the 

 minds of others. I should not be extant now had I not be- 

 come sensitive to looks of approval or disapproval on the 

 faces among which my life is cast. Looks of contempt cast 

 on other persons need affect me in no such peculiar way. 

 Were my mental life dependent exclusively on some other 

 person's welfare, either directly or in an indirect way, then 

 natural selection would unquestionably have brought it 

 about that I should be as sensitive to the social vicissitudes 

 of that other person as I now am to my own. Instead of 

 being egoistic I should be spontaneously altruistic, then. 

 But in this case, only partially realized in actual human 

 conditions, though the self I empiricall}- love would have 

 changed, my pure Ego or Thinker would have to remain 

 just what it is now. 



My spiritual powers, again, must interest me more than 

 those of other j^eople, and for the same reason. I should 

 not be here at all unless I had cultivated them and kept 

 them from decay. And the same laM- which made me once 

 care for them makes me care for them still. 



My own body and ivhat ministers to its needs are thus the 

 primitive object, instinctively determined , of my egoistic interests. 

 Other objects may become interesting derivatively through 

 association with any of these things, either as means or as 

 habitual concomitants ; and, so in a. thousand ivays the primi- 

 tive sphere of the egoistic emotions may enlarge and change 

 its boundaries. 



This sort of interest is really the meaning of the ivord 

 'my.' Whatever has it is eo ipso a part of me. My child, 

 my friend dies, and where he goes I feel that part of my^ 

 self now is and evermore shall be : 



" For this losing is true dying ; 

 This is lordly man's down-lying; 

 This his slow but sure reclining, 

 Star by star his world resigning." 



