And so is it, too, with the social effects of inadequate egoism. All
grades furnish examples of the mischiefs, positive and negative,
inflicted on society by excessive neglect of self. Now the case is that
of a laborer who, conscientiously continuing his work under a broiling
sun, spite of violent protest from his feelings, dies of sunstroke;
and leaves his family a burden to the parish. Now the case is that of
a clerk whose eyes permanently fail from over-straining, or who, daily
writing for hours after his fingers are painfully cramped, is attacked
with "scrivener's palsy," and, unable to write at all, sinks with aged
parents into poverty which friends are called on to mitigate. And now
the case is that of a man devoted to public ends who, shattering his
health by ceaseless application, fails to achieve all he might have
achieved by a more reasonable apportionment of his time between labor
on behalf of others and ministration to his own needs.
§ 73. In one further way is the undue subordination of egoism to
altruism injurious. Both directly and indirectly unselfishness pushed
to excess generates selfishness.
Consider first the immediate effects. That one man may yield up to
another a gratification, it is needful that the other shall accept it;
and where the gratification is of a kind to which their respective
claims are equal, or which is no more required by the one than by
the other, acceptance implies a readiness to get gratification at
another's cost. The circumstances and needs of the two being alike,
the transaction involves as much culture of egoism in the last as
it involves culture of altruism in the first. It is true that not
unfrequently, difference between their means or difference between
their appetites for a pleasure which the one has had often and the
other rarely, divests the acceptance of this character; and it is true
that in other cases the benefactor manifestly takes so much pleasure
in giving pleasure, that the sacrifice is partial, and the reception
of it not wholly selfish. But to see the effect above indicated we
must exclude such inequalities, and consider what happens where wants
are approximately alike and where the sacrifices, not reciprocated at
intervals, are perpetually on one side. So restricting the inquiry all
can name instances verifying the alleged result. Every one can remember
circles in which the daily surrender of benefits by the generous to
the greedy, has caused increase of greediness, until there has been
produced an unscrupulous egoism intolerable to all around. There are
obvious social effects of kindred nature. Most thinking people now
recognize the demoralization caused by indiscriminate charity. They
see how in the mendicant there is, besides destruction of the normal
relation between labor expended and benefit obtained, a genesis of the
expectation that others shall minister to his needs; showing itself
sometimes in the venting of curses on those who refuse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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