Theories in their own ethereal essence can have no influence on events.
But the men who conceive and adopt a theory form, in doing so, certain
habits of discrimination and of reaction to things. In fact, they have
conceived and adopted their theory because their habits of apprehension
and action suggested it to them, or could be brought to suggest it: the
explicit theory is a symbol and omen of their practical attitude, of
their way, as the phrase has it, of grasping the situation.
All philosophies have the common property of being speculative, and,
therefore, their immediate influence on those who hold them is in
many ways alike, however opposed the theories may be to one another:
they all make people theoretical. In this sense any philosophy, if
warmly embraced, has a moralising force, because, even if it belittles
morality, it absorbs the mind in intellectual contemplation, accustoms
it to wide and reasoned comparisons, and makes the sorry escapades of
human nature from convention seem even more ignominious than its ruling
prejudices.
The particular theory of egotism arises from an [Pg 163] exorbitant
interest in ourselves, in the medium of thought and action rather than
in its objects. It is not necessarily incorrect, because the self
is actual and indispensable; but the insistence on it is a little
abnormal, because the self, like consciousness, ought to be diaphanous.
Egotism in philosophy is, therefore, a pretty sure symptom of excessive
pedantry and inordinate self-assertion.
In the lofty theory of egotism life is represented as a sort of game of
patience, in which the rules, the cards, the table, and the empty time
on our hands, all are mere images created by the fancy, as in a dream.
The _sense_ of being occupied, though one really has nothing to do,
will then be the secret of the whole affair, and the sole good to be
attained by living. Of course this fantastic theory is put forward only
on great occasions, when an extreme profundity is in place; but like
other esoteric doctrines it expresses very well the spirit in which
those people live habitually who would appeal to it in the last resort.
Obviously such an egotist should in consistency be a man of principle.
He would feel it to be derogatory to his dignity, and contrary to his
settled purpose, to cheat at the game he has instituted. That luck
should sometimes go against him is pre-ordained by himself; otherwise
the game would have no zest, and to be interested, to be pressed, [Pg
164] even to be annoyed seems the highest good to him in his great
tedium. He will, therefore, be assiduous, patient, and law-abiding; and
the idea of ever abandoning his chosen game for anything less forced
and less arbitrary will seem to him disloyalty to himself, and a great
wickedness.
Indeed, nothing beside his own purpose will have any value in his
eyes, or even any existence. He will therefore inevitably act without
consideration for others, without courtesy, without understanding.
When he chooses to observe anything external--and he is
studious--his very attentions will be an insult; for he will
assume that his idea of that external thing is the reality of it, and
that other people can have only such rights and only such a character
as he is willing to assign to them. It follows from his egotistical
principles that in judging others he should be officious and rude,
learned and mistaken.
What the egotist calls his will and his ideals are, taken together,
simply his passions; but the passions of the egotist are turned into
a system and go unrebuked. A man who lowers his precepts to the level
of his will may the more easily raise his practice to the level of his
precepts. He endows his life with a certain coherence, momentum, and
integrity, just because he has suppressed all vain aspiration and all
useless shame. He does not call himself a sinner; [Pg 165] he would be
at a loss for a reason to think himself one; for really his standard of
virtue expresses nothing but his prevalent will. Is it not intelligible
that such a morality should be more efficacious, more unifying,
heavier, and more convinced than one which begins by condemning our
natural passions and the habitual course of human life?
In fact, egotism in practice is a solemn and arduous business; there is
nothing malicious about it and nothing gay. There is rather a stolid
surprise that such honest sentiments and so much enterprise should not
meet everywhere with applause. If other people are put thereby at a
disadvantage, why should they not learn their lesson and adopt in their
turn the methods of the superman? If they are touched by the vanity
and the charm of existence and neglect the intense pursuit of their
absolute will, why do they complain if they are jostled and beaten?
Only he deserves life and freedom, said Goethe, who is forced daily to
win them afresh.
If the egotist suffers passion to speak in his philosophy, it is
perhaps because he has so little passion. Men of frank passions quickly
see the folly of them; but the passions of the egotist are muffled,
dull, like the miserly passions of old men; they are diffused into
sensuality and sentiment, or hardened into maxims. Egotistical lovers
can hold hands for hours [Pg 166] and chastely kiss each other for
years; such tokens of affection help to keep them in love and at the
same time are a sop to more troublesome impulses. Sentimentality and
gush mark the absence of passion: the blood has been diluted to lymph.
Hence the egotist can the more easily mistake his passions for duties,
and his cupidities for ideals. His devotion to these ideals is pure and
enthusiastic; but in serving them he fattens steadily, as punctual at
his work as at his meals, as dutifully moved by the approved music as
by the official patriotism, vicious when it seems manly to be vicious,
brutal when it seems politic to be brutal; he feels he is impeccable,
and he must die in his sins. Nothing can ruffle the autonomous
conscience of this kind of idealist, whose nature may be gross, but
whose life is busy and conventional, and who loudly congratulates
himself daily on all he knows and does.
Turn the circumstances about as you like, the egotist finds only one
ultimate reason for everything. It is not a reason; it is absolute
will. Suppose we asked the ego, in the Fichtean system, why it posited
a material world to be its implacable enemy and rebellious toy, and why
without necessity it raised this infinity of trouble for itself and for
the unhappy world which it created by its fiat. It could only reply:
"Because such is the categorical imperative [Pg 167] within me; because
so I will, so I must, and so my absolute duty and its logic require. If
the consequences are tragic--and in the end I know they must be
tragic--that only proves the sublime unselfishness of my egotism,
the purity of my sacred folly, the ideality of my groundless will. All
reasons, all justifications which might appeal to me must be posterior
to my will; my will itself can have no justification and no reason."
Let us admire the sincerity of this searching confession. Virtue
itself, if it relied on self-consciousness for its philosophy, could
not justify itself on other grounds. If the difference between virtue
and vice is hereby obliterated, that only proves that the difference is
not founded on self-consciousness but on the circumstances and powers
under which we live. What self-consciousness can disclose is not the
basis of anything. All will is the expression of some animal I body,
frail and mortal, but teachable and rich in resource. The environment
in which this will finds itself controls and rewards its various
movements, and establishes within it the difference between virtue and
vice, wisdom and folly.
The whole transcendental philosophy, if made ultimate, is false, and
nothing but a private perspective. The will is absolute neither in the
individual nor in humanity. Nature is not a product of [Pg 168] the
mind, but on the contrary there is an external world, ages prior to
any idea of it, which the mind recognises and feeds upon. There is a
steady human nature within us, which our moods and passions may wrong
but cannot annul. There is no categorical imperative but only the
operation of instincts and interests more or less subject to discipline
and mutual adjustment. Our whole life is a compromise, an incipient
loose harmony between the passions of the soul and the forces of
nature, forces which likewise generate and protect the souls of other
creatures, endowing them with powers of expression and self-assertion
comparable with our own, and with aims no less sweet and worthy in
their own eyes; so that the quick and honest mind cannot but practise
courtesy in the universe, exercising its will without vehemence or
forced assurance, judging with serenity, and in everything discarding
the word absolute as the most false and the most odious of words. As
Montaigne observes, "He who sets before him, as in a picture, this
vast image of our mother Nature in her entire majesty; who reads in
her aspect such universal and continual variety; who discerns himself
therein, and not himself only but a whole kingdom, to be but a most
delicate dot--he alone esteems things according to the just
measure of their greatness."
[Pg 169]
INDEX
Alexander the Great, a model for German idealists, 80, 81
Aristotle, 120, 124
Belief in God, disproved pragmatically, 134
Bull-psychology, 148, 153
Burckhardt, 47
Byron, 48, 49
Cæsar Borgia, a superman, 138
Calvinism, in Kant, 57; in Fichte, 25, 77; in Hegel, 111
Categorical imperative, its origin, 56; its prerogatives, 62;
its dangers, 63
Chancellor, the German, his chivalrous after-thought about Belgium, 50
Christianity, foreign to Germany, 11;
undermined by German philosophy, 104, 105;
patronised by Goethe, 46;
abandoned by romantic individualists, 107;
denounced by Nietzsche, 130-132;
has one element in common with egotism, 106
Classicism, romantic in Goethe, 46;
missed by Nietzsche, 139-142;
when truly vital, 48
Conquest, a sublime duty, 80, 81
Contraries, alleged to be inseparable, 89, 90
Criticism, historical, has a transcendental basis, 29
_Critique of Pure Reason_, its agnosticism, 14;
its sophistical foundation, 20