A man in whom self-seeking of any sort is largely developed is said to be selfish.[268] He is on the other hand called unselfish if he shows consideration for the interests of other selves than his own. Now what is the intimate _nature_ of the selfish emotion in him? and what is the primary _object_ of its regard? We have described him pursuing and fostering as his self first one set of things and then another; we have seen the same set of facts gain or lose interest in his eyes, leave him indifferent, or fill him either with triumph or despair according as he made pretensions to appropriate them, treated them as if they were potentially or actually parts of himself, or not. We know how little it matters to us whether _some_ man, a man taken at large and in the abstract, prove a failure or succeed in life,--he may be hanged for aught we care,--but we know the utter momentousness and terribleness of the alternative when the man is the one whose name we ourselves bear. _I_ must not be a failure, is the very loudest of the voices that clamor in each of our breasts: let fail who may, _I_ at least must succeed. Now the first conclusion which these facts suggest is that each of us is animated by a _direct feeling of regard for his own pure principle of individual existence_, whatever that may be, taken merely as such. It appears as if all our concrete manifestations of selfishness might be the conclusions of as many syllogisms, each with this principle as the subject of its major premiss, thus: Whatever is me is precious; this is me; therefore this is precious; whatever is mine must not fail; this is mine; therefore this must not fail, etc. It appears, I say, as if this principle inoculated all it touched with its own intimate quality of worth; as if, previous to the touching, everything might be matter of indifference, and nothing interesting in its own right; as if my regard for my own body even were an interest not simply in this body, but in this body only so far as it is mine.