Egotism in German Philosophy/Chapter XVI
egotism in practice
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 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 preordained by himself; otherwise the game would have no zest, and to be interested, to be pressed, 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; 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 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 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 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 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.”