O.M. Different results of the one Master Impulse: the necessity of securing one’s self approval. They wear diverse clothes and are subject to diverse moods, but in whatsoever ways they masquerade they are the _same person_ all the time. To change the figure, the _compulsion_ that moves a man—and there is but the one—is the necessity of securing the contentment of his own spirit. When it stops, the man is dead. Y.M. That is foolishness. Love— O.M. Why, love is that impulse, that law, in its most uncompromising form. It will squander life and everything else on its object. Not _primarily_ for the object’s sake, but for _its own_. When its object is happy _it_ is happy—and that is what it is unconsciously after. Y.M. You do not even except the lofty and gracious passion of mother-love? O.M. No, _it _is the absolute slave of that law. The mother will go naked to clothe her child; she will starve that it may have food; suffer torture to save it from pain; die that it may live. She takes a living _pleasure_ in making these sacrifices. _She does it for that reward_—that self-approval, that contentment, that peace, that comfort. _She would do it for your child_ IF SHE COULD GET THE SAME PAY. Y.M. This is an infernal philosophy of yours. O.M. It isn’t a philosophy, it is a fact. Y.M. Of course you must admit that there are some acts which— O.M. No. There is _no_ act, large or small, fine or mean, which springs from any motive but the one—the necessity of appeasing and contenting one’s own spirit. Y.M. The world’s philanthropists— O.M. I honor them, I uncover my head to them—from habit and training; and _they_ could not know comfort or happiness or self-approval if they did not work and spend for the unfortunate. It makes _them_ happy to see others happy; and so with money and labor they buy what they are after—_happiness, self-approval_. Why don’t miners do the same thing? Because they can get a thousandfold more happiness by _not_ doing it. There is no other reason. They follow the law of their make. Y.M. What do you say of duty for duty’s sake? O.M. That _it does not exist_. Duties are not performed for duty’s _sake_, but because their _neglect_ would make the man _uncomfortable_. A man performs but _one_ duty—the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself. If he can most satisfyingly perform this sole and only duty by _helping_ his neighbor, he will do it; if he can most satisfyingly perform it by _swindling_ his neighbor, he will do it. But he always looks out for Number One—_first_; the effects upon others are a _secondary_ matter. Men pretend to self-sacrifices, but this is a thing which, in the ordinary value of the phrase, _does not exist and has not existed_. A man often honestly _thinks_ he is sacrificing himself merely and solely for some one else, but he is deceived; his bottom impulse is to content a requirement of his nature and training, and thus acquire peace for his soul.