All religions speak about death during this life on earth. Death must come before rebirth. But what must die? False confidence in ones own knowledge, self-love and egoism. Our egoism must be broken.
Die Meisterhaft gilt oft fur Egoismus=--Mastery passes often for egoism.
He who overcomes his egoism rids himself of the most stubborn obstacle that blocks the way to all true greatness and all true happiness.
Violent combativeness for particular sects, as Evangelical, Roman Catholic, High Church, Broad Church, or the like, is merely a form of party egoism, and a defiance of Christ, not a confession of Him.
The love season is the carnival of egoism, and it brings the touchstone to our natures.
I believe, in spite of all, in truth's victory. I believe in the momentous value, hereafter inviolable, of those few truly fraternal men in all the countries of the world, who, in the oscillation of national egoisms let loose, stand up and stand out, steadfast as the glorious statues of Right and Duty.
"I ask your permission to drop this subject altogether," Miüsov repeated. "I will tell you instead, gentlemen, another interesting and rather characteristic anecdote of Ivan Fyodorovitch himself. Only five days ago, in a gathering here, principally of ladies, he solemnly declared in argument that there was nothing in the whole world to make men love their neighbors. That there was no law of nature that man should love mankind, and that, if there had been any love on earth hitherto, it was not owing to a natural law, but simply because men have believed in immortality. Ivan Fyodorovitch added in parenthesis that the whole natural law lies in that faith, and that if you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism. That's not all. He ended by asserting that for every individual, like ourselves, who does not believe in God or immortality, the moral law of nature must immediately be changed into the exact contrary of the former religious law, and that egoism, even to crime, must become not only lawful but even recognized as the inevitable, the most rational, even honorable outcome of his position. From this paradox, gentlemen, you can judge of the rest of our eccentric and paradoxical friend Ivan Fyodorovitch's theories."
Rakitin wondered at their enthusiasm. He was aggrieved and annoyed, though he might have reflected that each of them was just passing through a spiritual crisis such as does not come often in a lifetime. But though Rakitin was very sensitive about everything that concerned himself, he was very obtuse as regards the feelings and sensations of others--partly from his youth and inexperience, partly from his intense egoism.
A convent is a contradiction. Its object, salvation; its means thereto, sacrifice. The convent is supreme egoism having for its result supreme abnegation.
The aristocracy, on the contrary, went on increasing in power, and eventually became masters of the situation. It was through them that the emperor, theoretically absolute, practically carried on his administration; but he was no longer either strong or a divinity, and possessed nothing but the semblance of omnipotence. His official despotism was opposed by the passive but invincible competition of an aristocracy, more powerful than himself because it derived its support from the revived relation of patron and dependants. But though the aristocracy administered, yet they did not govern. They suffered, as did the Empire, from a general state of lassitude. Like their private life, their public life, no longer stimulated by struggles and difficulties, had become sluggish; their power of initiative was enfeebled. Feeling their incapacity they no longer embarked on great political schemes; and the army, the instrument by which such schemes were carried on, was only held together by the force of habit. In this society, where there was no traffic in anything but wealth and ideas, the soldier was nothing more than an agitator or a parasite. The egoism of the upper classes held military duty in contempt, while their avarice depopulated the countryside, whence the legions had drawn their recruits. And now come the barbarians! A prey to perpetual alarm, the people entrenched themselves behind those high walls of the _oppida_ which Roman security had razed to the ground, but imperial impotence had restored, and where life in the middle ages was destined to vegetate in unrestful isolation. Entry: FRANCE
So again, in the modified Benthamism which the persuasive exposition of J.S. Mill afterwards made popular in England, the influence of Auguste Comte (_Philosophie positive_, 1829-1842, and _Système de politique positive_, 1851-1854) appears as the chief modifying element. This influence, so far as it has affected moral as distinct from political speculation, has been exercised primarily through the general conception of human progress; which, in Comte's view, consists in the ever-growing preponderance of the distinctively human attributes over the purely animal, social feelings being ranked highest among human attributes, and highest of all the most universalized phase of human affection, the devotion to humanity as a whole. Accordingly, it is the development of benevolence in man, and of the habit of "living for others," which Comte takes as the ultimate aim and standard of practice, rather than the mere increase of happiness. He holds, indeed, that the two are inseparable, and that the more _altruistic_ any man's sentiments and habits of action can be made, the greater will be the happiness enjoyed by himself as well as by others. But he does not seriously trouble himself to argue with egoism, or to weigh carefully the amount of happiness that might be generally attained by the satisfaction of egoistic propensities duly regulated; a supreme unquestioning self-devotion, in which all personal calculations are suppressed, is an essential feature of his moral ideal. Such a view is almost diametrically opposed to Bentham's conception of normal human existence; the newer utilitarianism of Mill represents an endeavour to find the right middle path between the two extremes. Entry: J
INDIVIDUALISM (from Lat. _individualis_, that which is not divided, an individual), in political philosophy, the theory of government according to which the good of the state consists in the well-being and free initiative of the component members. From this standpoint, as contrasted with that of the various forms of socialism (q.v.) which subordinate the individual to the community, the community as such is an artificial unity. Individualism is, however, by no means identical with egoism, though egoism is always individualistic. An individualist may also be a conscientious altruist: he is by no means hostile to or aloof from society (any more than the socialist is necessarily hostile to the individual), but he is opposed to state interference with individual freedom wherever, in his opinion, it can be avoided. The practical distinction in modern society is necessarily one of degree, and both "individualism" and "socialism" are very vaguely used, and generally as terms of reproach by opponents. Every practical politician of whatever party must necessarily combine in his programme individualistic and socialist principles. Extreme individualism is pure anarchy: on the other hand Thomas Hobbes, a characteristic individualist, vigorously supported absolute government as necessary to the well-being of individuals. Moreover it is conceivable under given circumstances that an individualist might logically advocate measures (e.g. compulsory military service) which conflict with individual freedom. In practice individualism is chiefly concerned to oppose the concentration of commercial and industrial enterprise in the hands of the state and the municipality. The principles on which this opposition is based are mainly two: that popularly elected representatives are not likely to have the qualifications or the sense of responsibility required for dealing with the multitudinous enterprises and the large sums of public money involved, and that the health of the state depends on the exertions of individuals for their personal benefit. Entry: INDIVIDUALISM
He had now become a popular leader. As soon as his health was restored he was appointed (January 1841) editor of the _Pesti Hirlap_, the newly founded organ of the party. Strangely enough, the government did not refuse its consent. The success of the paper was unprecedented. The circulation soon reached what was then the immense figure of 7000. The attempts of the government to counteract his influence by founding a rival paper, the _Vilag_, only increased his importance and added to the political excitement. The warning of the great reformer Szechenyi that by his appeal to the passions of the people he was leading the nation to revolution was neglected. Kossuth, indeed, was not content with advocating those reforms--the abolition of entail, the abolition of feudal burdens, taxation of the nobles--which were demanded by all the Liberals. By insisting on the superiority of the Magyars to the Slavonic inhabitants of Hungary, by his violent attacks on Austria (he already discussed the possibility of a breach with Austria), he raised the national pride to a dangerous pitch. At last, in 1844, the government succeeded in breaking his connexion with the paper. The proprietor, in obedience to orders from Vienna (this seems the most probable account), took advantage of a dispute about salary to dismiss him. He then applied for permission to start a paper of his own. In a personal interview Metternich offered to take him into the government service. The offer was refused, and for three years he was without a regular position. He continued the agitation with the object of attaining both the political and commercial independence of Hungary. He adopted the economic principles of List, and founded a society, the "Vedegylet," the members of which were to consume none but home produce. He advocated the creation of a Hungarian port at Fiume. With the autumn of 1847 the great opportunity of his life came. Supported by the influence of Louis Batthyany, after a keenly fought struggle he was elected member for Budapest in the new Diet. "Now that I am a deputy, I will cease to be an agitator," he said. He at once became chief leader of the Extreme Liberals. Deak was absent. Batthyany, Szechenyi, Szemere, Eotvos, his rivals, saw how his intense personal ambition and egoism led him always to assume the chief place, and to use his parliamentary position to establish himself as leader of the nation; but before his eloquence and energy all apprehensions were useless. His eloquence was of that nature, in its impassioned appeals to the strongest emotions, that it required for its full effect the highest themes and the most dramatic situations. In a time of rest, though he could never have been obscure, he would never have attained the highest power. It was therefore a necessity of his nature, perhaps unconsciously, always to drive things to a crisis. The crisis came, and he used it to the full. Entry: KOSSUTH
Hermann's rare technological knowledge gave him a great advantage in dealing with some economic questions. He reviewed the principal fundamental ideas of the science with great thoroughness and acuteness. "His strength," says Roscher, "lies in his clear, sharp, exhaustive distinction between the several elements of a complex conception, or the several steps comprehended in a complex act." For keen analytical power his German brethren compare him with Ricardo. But he avoids several one-sided views of the English economist. Thus he places public spirit beside egoism as an economic motor, regards price as not measured by labour only but as a product of several factors, and habitually contemplates the consumption of the labourer, not as a part of the cost of production to the capitalist, but as the main practical end of economics. Entry: HERMANN
In the summer of 1794 Burke was struck to the ground by a blow to his deepest affection in life, and he never recovered from it. His whole soul was wrapped up in his only son, of whose abilities he had the most extravagant estimate and hope. All the evidence goes to show that Richard Burke was one of the most presumptuous and empty-headed of human beings. "He is the most impudent and opiniative fellow I ever knew," said Wolfe Tone. Gilbert Elliot, a very different man, gives the same account. "Burke," he says, describing a dinner party at Lord Fitzwilliam's in 1793, "has now got such a train after him as would sink anybody but himself: his son, who is quite _nauseated_ by all mankind; his brother, who is liked better than his son, but is rather oppressive with animal spirits and brogue; and his cousin, William Burke, who is just returned unexpectedly from India, as much ruined as when he went years ago, and who is a fresh charge on any prospects of power Burke may ever have. Mrs Burke has in her train Miss French [Burke's niece], the most perfect _She Paddy_ that ever was caught. Notwithstanding these disadvantages Burke is in himself a sort of power in the state. It is not too much to say that he is a sort of power in Europe, though totally without any of those means or the smallest share in them which give or maintain power in other men." Burke accepted the position of a power in Europe seriously. Though no man was ever more free from anything like the egoism of the intellectual coxcomb, yet he abounded in that active self-confidence and self-assertion which is natural in men who are conscious of great powers, and strenuous in promoting great causes. In the summer of 1791 he despatched his son to Coblenz to give advice to the royalist exiles, then under the direction of Calonne, and to report to him at Beaconsfield their disposition and prospects. Richard Burke was received with many compliments, but of course nothing came of his mission, and the only impression that remains with the reader of his prolix story is his tale of the two royal brothers, who afterwards became Louis XVIII. and Charles X., meeting after some parting, and embracing one another with many tears on board a boat in the middle of the Rhine, while some of the courtiers raised a cry of "Long live the king"--the king who had a few weeks before been carried back in triumph to his capital with Mayor Pétion in his coach. When we think of the pass to which things had come in Paris by this time, and of the unappeasable ferment that boiled round the court, there is a certain touch of the ludicrous in the notion of poor Richard Burke writing to Louis XVI. a letter of wise advice how to comport himself. Entry: A
The absorption of England in itself is shown with exceptional force in the case of Thackeray, who was by nature a cosmopolitan, yet whose work is so absorbed with the structure of English society as to be almost unintelligible to foreigners. The exploration of the human heart and conscience in relation to the new problems of the time had been almost abandoned by the novel since Richardson's time. It was for woman to attempt to resolve these questions, and with the aid of powerful imagination to propound very different conclusions. The conviction of Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) was that the mutual passionate love of one man and one woman is sacred and creates a centre of highest life, energy and joy in the world. George Eliot (1819-1880), on the other hand, detected a blind and cruel egoism in all such ecstasy of individual passion. It was in the autumn of 1847 that _Jane Eyre_ shocked the primness of the coteries by the unconcealed ardour of its love passages. Twelve years later _Adam Bede_ astonished the world by the intensity of its ethical light and shade. The introspective novel was now very gradually to establish a supremacy over the historical. The romance of the Brontës' forlorn life colours _Jane Eyre_, colours _Wuthering Heights_ and colours _Villette_; their work is inseparable from their story to an extent that we perhaps hardly realize. George Eliot did not receive this adventitious aid from romance, and her work was, perhaps, unduly burdened by ethical diatribe, scientific disquisition and moral and philosophical asides. It is more than redeemed, however, by her sovereign humour, by the actual truth in the portrayal of that absolutely self-centred Midland society of the 'thirties and 'forties, and by the moral significance which she extracts from the smaller actions and more ordinary characters of life by means of sympathy, imagination and a deep human compassion. Her novels are generally admitted to have obtained twin summits in _Adam Bede_ (1859) and _Middlemarch_ (1872). An even nicer delineator of the most delicate shades of the curiously remote provincial society of that day was Mrs Gaskell (1810-1865), whose _Cranford_ and _Wives and Daughters_ attain to the perfection of easy, natural and unaffected English narrative. Enthusiasm and a picturesque boyish ardour and partisanship are the chief features of _Westward Ho!_ and the other vivid and stirring novels of Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), to which a subtler gift in the discrimination of character must be added in the case of his brother Henry Kingsley (1830-1876). Charles, however, was probably more accomplished as a poet than in the to him too exciting operation of taking sides in a romance. The novels of Trollope, Reade and Wilkie Collins are, generally speaking, a secondary product of the literary forces which produced the great fiction of the 'fifties. The two last were great at structure and sensation: Trollope dogs the prose of every-day life with a certainty and a clearness that border upon inspiration. The great novels of George Meredith range between 1859 and 1880, stories of characters deeply interesting who reveal themselves to us by flashes and trust to our inspiration to do the rest. The wit, the sparkle, the entrain and the horizon of these books, from _Richard Feverel_ to the master analysis of _The Egoist_, have converted the study of Meredith into an exact science. Thomas Hardy occupies a place scarcely inferior to Meredith's as a stylist, a discoverer of new elements of the plaintive and the wistful in the vanishing of past ideals, as a depicter of the old southern rustic life of England and its tragi-comedy, in a series of novels which take rank with the greatest. Entry: VI
It is this latter fact which has led many students of human character to state that men do in fact aim at the gratification of their personal desires and impulses. The laws of the state and the various rules of conduct laid down by religion or morality are merely devices adopted for general convenience. The most remarkable statement of this point of view is that of Friedrich Nietzsche, who went so far as to denounce all forms of self-denial as cowardice:--let every one who is strong seek to make himself dominant at the expense of the weak. Entry: EGOISM
Perhaps the one European thinker who has carried evolutionary principles in ethics to their logical conclusion is Friedrich Nietzsche. Almost any system of morality or immorality might find some justification in Nietzsche's writings, which are extraordinarily chaotic and full of the wildest exaggerations. Yet it has been a true instinct which has led popular opinion as testified to by current literature to find in Nietzsche the most orthodox exponent of Darwinian ideas in their application to ethics. For he saw clearly that to be successful evolutionary ethics must involve the "transvaluation of all values," the "demoralization" of all ordinary current morality. He accepted frankly the glorification of brute strength, superior cunning and all the qualities necessary for success in the struggle for existence, to which the ethics of evolution necessarily tend. He proclaimed himself, before everything else, a physiologist, and looked to physiology to provide the ultimate standard for everything that has value; and though his own ethical code necessarily involves the disappearance of sympathy, love, toleration and all existing altruistic emotions, he yet in a sense finds room for them in such altruistic self-sacrifice as prepares the way for the higher man of the future. Thus, after a fashion, he is able to reconcile the conflicting claims of egoism and altruism and succeed where most apostles of evolution fail. The Christian virtues, sympathy for the weak, the suffering, &c., represent a necessary stage to be passed through in the evolution of the _Übermensch_, i.e. the stage when the weak and suffering combine in revolt against the strong. They are to be superseded, not so much because all social virtues are to be scorned and rejected, as because in their effects, i.e. in their tendency to perpetuate and prolong the existence of the weak and those who are least well equipped and endowed by nature, they are anti-social in character and inimical to the survival of the strongest and most vigorous type of humanity. Consequently Nietzsche in effect maintains the following paradoxical position: he explains the existence of altruism upon egoistical principles; he advocates the total abolition of all altruism by carrying these same egoistical principles to their logical conclusion; he nevertheless appeals to that moral instinct which makes men ready to sacrifice their own narrow personal interests to the higher good of society--an instinct profoundly altruistic in character--as the ultimate justification of the ethics he enunciates. Such a position is a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the attempt to transcend the ultimate character of those intuitions and feelings which prompt men to benevolence. Thus, though incidentally there is much to be learned from Nietzsche, especially from his criticism of the ethics of pessimism, or from the strictures he passes upon the negative morality of extreme asceticism or quietism, his system inevitably provides its own refutation. For no philosophy which travesties the real course of history and distorts the moral facts is likely to commend itself to the sober judgment of mankind however brilliant be its exposition or ingenious its arguments. Finally, the conceptions of strength, power and masterfulness by which Nietzsche attempts to determine his own moral ideal, become, when examined, as relative and unsatisfactory as other criteria of moral action said to be deduced from evolutionary principles. Men desire strength or power not as ends but as means to ends beyond them; Nietzsche is most convincing when the _Übermensch_ is left undefined. Imagined as ideal man, i.e. as morality depicts him, he becomes intelligible; imagined as Nietzsche describes him he reels back into the beast, and that distinction which chiefly separates man from the animal world out of which he has emerged, viz. his unique power of self-consciousness and self-criticism, is obliterated. Entry: A
In the first war, which lasted for a year (1562-1563), the triumvirs wished to secure Orleans, previously isolated. The threat of an English landing decided them to lay siege to Rouen, and it was taken by assault; but this cost the life of the versatile Antoine de Bourbon. On the 19th of December 1562 the duke of Guise barred the way to Dreux against the German reinforcements of d'Andelot, who after having threatened Paris were marching to join forces with the English troops for whom Coligny and Condé had paid by the cession of Havre. The death of marshal de St André, and the capture of the constable de Montmorency and of Condé, which marked this indecisive battle, left Coligny and Guise face to face. The latter's success was of brief duration; for on the 18th of February 1563 Poltrot de Méré assassinated him before Orleans, which he was trying to take once and for all. Catherine, relieved by the loss of an inconvenient preceptor, and by the disappearance of the other leaders, became mistress of the Catholic party, of whose strength and popularity she had now had proof, and her idea was to make peace at once on the best terms possible. The egoism of Condé, who got himself made lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and bargained for freedom of worship for the Protestant nobility only, compromised the future of both his church and his party, though rendering possible the peace of Amboise, concluded the 19th of March 1563. All now set off together to recapture Havre from the English. Entry: A
The claims of self-culture and of social service may when considered in the abstract or in some hypothetical case appear antagonistic and irreconcilable. But when they present themselves to the individual moral consciousness it may be safely asserted (1) that there can be only one moral choice possible, i.e. that their opposition (where they are opposed) involves no conflict of duties; and (2) that whichever ideal is in the end preferred, opportunities will nevertheless be provided within its realization for the concurrent realization of activities and capacities ordinarily associated with the ideal alleged to be contradictory. For just as there is no self-realization which does not involve self-sacrifice, so there is no room for that species of egoism within the confines of morality which is incompatible with social service. Entry: T