it ignores the self altogether, or recognizes it only as a self-conscious collection; and we do not think that the doctrine of two collections, each of which is aware of itself as antagonistic to the other collection, and both of which are collected in a larger collection, which is aware of itself as one, and yet as what falls into two self-conscious collections which struggle within it—can possibly be made intelligible to any person out of an asylum. The theory stands and falls with the view on the nature of the self which we came upon in Essay I. This is the first objection.
And the second is that the hereditary qualities will not even serve as the natural basis on which the good and bad selves are developed. If in a variety of men you take these selves, and examine their content, you will not find the same in each. The bad self is not entirely composed of habits and desires all of which are ‘egoistic’; the content of the good self is not all ‘altruistic.’ It is mere reckless theorizing to see in the bad self the assertion of propensities in themselves ‘egoistic,’ and nothing in the good self but what is naturally ‘altruistic.’ I do not know any one inborn propensity which may not be moralized into good or turned into bad. Take the virtues or vices of any man, and we can see that the natural basis of every virtue might under certain conditions have been developed into a vice, and the basis of every vice into a virtue; for vices and virtues have common roots. Illustration in detail would be wearisome, but I will adduce one single instance. Is the hereditary sexual propensity ‘egoistic’ or ‘altruistic’? If egoistic, then all the virtues based on it, to which it supplies the natural material, everything of which it is the root or the nourishment (and how much does not that mean?) is egoistic and bad; and this is in flat contradiction with facts. If altruistic, then the vices it gives origin to (some of the worst we have) are altruistic and good; and that again is against the facts. In any case the theory breaks against the facts and against itself.[1] And I have already contested the assertion that all the good self must be ‘altruistic,’ in the sense of being social.
- ↑ The reader must not misunderstand. I am not saying that good or bad qualities are in no sense transmitted to descendants. I say that these natural good and bad qualities can not be divided into two classes, altruistic and egoistic; and I say further that, if you examine the actual good and bad self in a man, you will not necessarily find all that he has inherited, which was good in his parents, on the good side; and all of the bad in them, which he has inherited, on his bad side. A man’s character is not the grouping of two descended heaps.
