In conceiving of capacity, then, not as mere possibility of an ideal or infinite self, but as the more adequate comprehension and treatment of the present activity, we are enabled to substitute a working conception of the self for a metaphysical definition of it. We are also, I believe, enabled to get rid of a difficulty which everyone has felt, in one way or another, in the self-realization theory. In the ordinary conception of the presupposed self, that self is already there as a fixed fact, even though it be as an eternal self. The only reason for performing any moral act is then for this self. Whatever is done, is done for this fixed self. I do not believe it possible to state this theory in a way which does not make action selfish in the bad sense of selfish.[1] When we condemn an act as bad, because selfish, we always mean, I think, exactly this: the person in question acted from interest in his past or fixed self, instead of holding the self open for instruction;–instead, that is, of finding the self in the activity called for by the situation. I do not see that it is a bit better to act to get goodness for the self, than it is to get pleasure for the self. The selfishness of saints who are bound to maintain their own saintliness at all hazards, is Pharisaism; and Pharisaism is hardly more lovable, or more practically valuable, than is voluptuarism. Fiat justitia, ruat coelum, will serve, if it means: Let the needed thing be done, though the heavens of my past, or fixed, or presupposed self fall. The man who interprets the saying to mean: Let me keep my precious self moral, though the heavens of public action fall, is as despicable personally as he is dangerous socially. He has identified himself with his past notions of himself, and, refusing to allow the fructifying pollen of experience to touch them, refusing to revise his conception of himself in the light of the widest situation in which he finds himself, he begins to disintegrate and becomes a standing menace to his community or group. It is not action for the self that is required (thus setting up a fixed self which is
- ↑ Selfish, of course, in one sense, all action is; but the point here is that if the self is there in some fixed sense already, and action takes place for this self, then, logically, action is selfish in that sense of selfish motive for which we condemn any one.
