CHAPTER IV.
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM IN CERTAIN RECENT DISCUSSIONS.
- But if the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
Not even yet have we exhausted the perplexities
involved in this fundamental difficulty of moral
theory. Some one may say: “Let the ideals in
general take care of themselves. We are concerned
in this world with individual and concrete duties.
These at least are plain.” But these also involve
questions concerning the ideal. Let us see then how
the same difficulty that has beset the more general
moral doctrines, returns to plague us in case of the
theoretical treatment of one of these plain duties.
Our discussion will here gain in definiteness what it
loses in generality. Let us choose a concrete moral
question, namely, the problem of the true ground of
the moral distinctions and other moral relations
between what people nowadays like to call altruism
and what they like to call egoism.
Upon what, then, if upon anything, is founded the moral precept: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself? Or is there any foundation for it at all? To be quite familiar in discussing this problem, let us take it as it appears in recent discussion. The
