=2. Results as Selfish: Ambiguity in the Notion.=--We must then give up the notion that motives are inherently self-seeking, in the sense that there is in voluntary acts a thought of the self as the end for the sake of which the act is performed. The self-seeking doctrine may, however, be restated in these terms: Although there is no thought of self or its advantage consciously entertained, yet our original instincts are such that their objects do as _matter of result_ conduce primarily to the well-being and advantage of the self. In this sense, anger, fear, hunger, and thirst, etc., are said to be egoistic or self-seeking--not that their _conscious_ object is the self, but that their inevitable effect is to preserve and protect the self. The fact that an instinct secures self-preservation or self-development does not, however, make it "egoistic" or "selfish" in the moral sense; nor does it throw any light upon the moral status of the instinct. _Everything depends upon the sort of self which is maintained._ There is, indeed, some presumption (see _ante_, p. 294) that the act sustains a _social_ self, that is, a self whose maintenance is of social value. If the individual organism did not struggle for food; strive aggressively against obstacles and interferences; evade or shelter itself against menacing superior force, what would become of children, fathers and mothers, lawyers, doctors and clergymen, citizens and patriots--in short, of society? If we avoid setting up a purely abstract self, if we keep in mind that every actual self is a self which _includes_ social relations and offices, both actual and potential, we shall have no difficulty in seeing that self-preservative instincts _may_ be, and taken by and large, _must_ be, socially conservative. Moreover, while it is not true that if "a man does not look after his own interests no one else will" (if that means that his interests are no one else's affair in any way), it is true that no one has a right to neglect his own interests in the hope that some one else will care for them. "His own interests," properly speaking, are precisely the ends which concern him more directly than they concern any one else. Each man is, so to say, nearer himself than is any one else, and, therefore, has certain duties to and about himself which cannot be performed by any other one. Others may present food or the conditions of education, but the individual alone can digest the food or educate himself. It is profitable for society, not merely for an individual, that each of us should instinctively have his powers most actively and intensely called out by the things that distinctively affect him and his own welfare. Any other arrangement would mean waste of social energy, inefficiency in securing social results.