apart from desire and our desire, never to do anything but what we want, then surely all deliberate actions must be considered selfish. For deliberately to act without an object in view is impossible; duty is done for duty’s sake only when duty is an object of desire; thought as such does not move; and only the thought of what you like or dislike brings with it a practical result. Whether we consider blind appetite, or conscious desire, or circumspect volition, the result is the same. No act is ever without a reason for its existence, and the reason is always a feeling of pain or of pleasure, or both. We seek what we like, and avoid what we dislike; we do what we want, and this is selfish.
That others approve or disapprove goes for nothing, for it does not touch the main fact. You may want to do what others want you to do, or you may not: but you do what you want. And so, considered morally and not from the outside, your action is the same, for the root of it is in all cases one, your own desire or aversion; and to follow these is always selfish. What else is selfishness? Others may say to me ‘you are agreeable or disagreeable,’ ‘you are taking the best means to your end,’ or again ‘you are mistaken,’ but to me this makes no difference: morality looks at the heart, and it sees that I please myself in each one of my acts, and can do nothing else. If I were pleased to do otherwise, it would only be because I was otherwise pleased.
Can I sacrifice myself? Oh yes, I can like what others do not like, and the result may prove painful to myself and pleasant to others; but so it may be with the result of any other act: or the result may be pleasant to me, though it would not be so to others. And so self-sacrifice is a peculiar sort of self-seeking, arising from mistaken notions or eccentric tastes. No doubt it may be agreeable to others, and so be approved by them; but to conclude that the act is disagreeable to me when I do it, is to suppose an absurdity. If it were so I should not do it. Or if my appetite is perverted to take pain for pleasure (as it really can not be), this surely does not prove that I have no appetite at all, or that I do not seek to gratify it.
Illustrations are useful as appeals to the feelings; but they do not remove vital facts, though they may remove our attention from them; and the vital fact here, to repeat it again, is this—
