Everything that opposes the strivings of his Egoism awakens his dislike, his anger, his hate: this is the mortal enemy, which he tries to annihilate. If it were possible, he would like to possess everything for his own pleasure; as this is impossible, he wishes at least to control everything. "All things for me, and nothing for others" is his maxim. Egoism is a huge giant overtopping the world. If each person were allowed to choose between his own destruction and that of the rest of mankind, I need not say what the decision would be in most cases. Thus, it is that every human unit makes himself the centre of the world, which he views exclusively from that standpoint. Whatever occurs, even, for instance, the most sweeping changes in the destinies of nations, he brings into relation first and foremost with his own interests, which, however slightly and indirectly they may be affected, he is sure to think of before anything else. No sharper contrast can be imagined than that between the profound and exclusive attention which each person devotes to his own self, and the indifference with which, as a rule, all other people regard that self,--an indifference precisely like that with which he in turn looks upon them. To a certain extent it is actually comic to see how each individual out of innumerable multitudes considers himself, at least from the practical point of view, as the only real thing, and all others in some sort as mere phantoms. The ultimate reason of this lies in the fact that every one is =directly= conscious of himself, but of others only _indirectly_, through his mind's eye; and the direct impression asserts its right. In other words, it is in consequence of the subjectivity which is essential to our consciousness that each person is himself the whole world; for all that is objective exists only indirectly, as simply the mental picture of the subject; whence it comes about that everything is invariably expressed in terms of self-consciousness. The only world which the individual really grasps, and of which he has certain knowledge, he carries in himself, as a mirrored image fashioned by his brain; and he is, therefore, its centre. Consequently he is all in all to himself; and since he feels that he contains within his ego all that is real, nothing can be of greater importance to him than his own self.[3] Moreover this supremely important self, this microcosm, to which the macrocosm stands in relation as its mere modification or accident,--this, which is the individual's whole world, he knows perfectly well must be destroyed by death; which is therefore for him equivalent to the destruction of all things.