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 [Pg 166] 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 [Pg 167] 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."