Egoism manifests itself in a thousand different ways, often in subtle
disguise. Its greatest triumph lies in its having succeeded up to the
present day in masquerading as love. Not only many modern egotists,
but ancient Egyptians, Persians, and Hindoos, Greeks, and Romans,
barbarians and savages, have been credited with love when in reality
they manifested nothing but sexual self-love, the woman in the case
being valued only as an object without which the beloved Ego could not
have its selfish indulgence. By way of example let us take what Pallas
says in his work on Russia (III., 70) of the Samoyedes:
"The wretched women of this nomadic people are obliged
not only to do all the house-work, but to take down and
erect the huts, pack and unpack the sleigh, and at the
same time perform slavish duties for their husbands,
who, except on a few amorous evenings, hardly bestow on
them a look or a pleasant word, while expecting them to
anticipate all their desires."
The typical shallow observer, whose testimony has done so much to
prevent anthropology from being a science, would conclude, if he
happened to see a Samoyede on one of these "amorous evenings," that he
"loved" his wife, whereas it ought to be clear to the most obtuse that
he loves only himself, caring for his wife merely as a means of
gratifying his selfish appetites. In the preceding pages I endeavored
to show that such a man may exhibit, in his relations to a woman,
individual preference, monopolism, jealousy, hope and despair and
hyperbolic expression of feeling, yet without giving the slightest
indication of love--that is, of affection--for her. It is all egoism,
and egoism is the antipode of love, which is a phase of altruism. Not
that these selfish ingredients are absent in genuine love. Romantic
love embraces both selfish and altruistic elements, but the former are
subdued and overpowered by the latter, and sexual passion is not love
unless the altruistic ingredients are present. It is these altruistic
ingredients that we must now consider, beginning with sympathy, which
is the entering wedge of altruism.