of betaking himself beneath the walls of a citadel, where he will be blown in pieces by the enemy's grape-shot. Altruism is as insipid as egoism, and is reducible at bottom to egoism; in much the same way as sensual love, which has justly been called "egoism for two." Indeed, why should we be ready to sacrifice ourselves for others, and to promote their desire in every case and in spite of everything? For what reason, save for the blind and irrational attachment to them which makes a man throw away his life or descend to abjection for a wicked woman furiously loved, suffer every shame and torment for an unworthy son, or yield to the impulses of sympathy inspired by an individual? This blind and irrational attachment to others is at bottom attachment to ourselves, to our nerves, to our fancies, to our convenience, to our habits. It is utility, not morality; for morality wills us to be ready to separate ourselves from others as from ourselves, when the occasion arises, to leave wives and sons and brothers, and follow duty which transcends them all. "Thou only, O ideal, art true,..." or rather, by means of the ideal and of the universal, all things are true; without the ideal, there is not one of them that does not become false, as there is not an organism that does not become vile clay, when abandoned by life. [Sidenote: _Social organism, State, interest of the race, etc. Critique of them._] There is another group of material principles which seems to surpass individuals, because it makes morality to consist of promoting either so-called _laws of nature_ or so-called _institutions._ Of such kind are those that place morality in the service of the _social organism and of the State, or of the interest of the Species and of Life_ (this being understood as animal life or very near to animality). But if it seem that contingent facts are thus escaped, that is not really so. For none of these concepts expresses the universality of the real, but this or that group of its particular manifestations: the life called social or political, this or that animal species, this or that vital manifestation. And none of these facts can be ethically willed without exceptions. The moral man sacrifices the State to the Church, or the Church to the State, atrophies certain organs and suppresses certain vital functions for universal ends, or for the ends of what is called civilization; he defends, preserves and increases certain aptitudes of the human race, but lets others disappear or modifies them, always adapting the interest of the species to that of the ideal. Were he to do otherwise, he would again be substituting utility for morality, his immediate affection for certain things or for certain single and individual facts, to the affection for them that should always be _mediated,_ that is to say, mediated by the universal. [Sidenote: _Material religious principles. Critique of them._]