Taken From "The Egoist: An Individualist Review." Formerly "The New Freewoman."
No. 1. Vol. I. Thursday, January 15th, 1914.
THIS time it is hedonism. It was nominalism, has been realism, intuitionism, individualism, Socialism. Given time, and the catholicity of these pages, we shall in the opinion of one or other of our readers rehearse the entire procession of isms and schisms, whether ancient, mediaeval or modern. The compliment paid to the wealth of our erudition would no doubt be pleasant-and wholly undeserved did it not clash with our egoistic temper, which compels us to protest as to our status. Our modesty notwithstanding, we protest that we brew our own malt: we are not bottlers and retailers: we are in the wholesale and producing line of business. If our beer bears a resemblance in flavour to other brands, it is due to the similarity of taste in the makers. "Stirnerian" therefore is not the adejective fittingly to be applied to the egoism of THE EGOIST. What the appropriate term would be we can omit to state. Having said this, we do not seek to minimise the amount of Stirner which may be traced herein. The contrary rather, since having no fear that creative genius folded its wings when Stirner laid down his pen, we would gladly credit to him-unlike so many of the individualists who have enriched themselves somewhat at his hands-the full measure of his astounding creativeness. For it is not the smallness in measure of what one takes away from genius one admires which is creditable. It is a very old story the comedy of discipleship-that though the banquet of wisdow is spread and open to all-comers the number of the foolish abroad does not materially diminish. We may take from where we please, but "how much" depends on how much we can. The wealth of the feast is the affair of the hosts: capacity to take from it concerns only the guest. Since then we recognise his value, why protest that we have drawn at the stream of his creation into thimbles? We take what we can, and our capacity is not measured by thimblefuls. And because it is not, "Stirnerian egoism" has not as Mr. Meulen suggests in the correspondence columns "taken such a firm hold" of us. If that appears a paradox to our correspondent we ask him to work it out. It is really very simple and straightforward if he will bear in mind that we are very great pots and can therefore afford to be honest. So few people can.
We can now consider Mr. Meulen's dictum that "egoism is the doctrine that the motive of every human action is the pleasure of the performer." THE EGOIST is an odd quarter wherein to present a word like "Pleasure" as the main term in a definition. What is "Pleasure?" The text-books even will point out that there is a confusion: that there are concrete activities which may be called "pleasures," which however vary with person, mood and circumstances, and if insisted upon are likely to be classed as nuisances and a bore. But "Pleasure" the vague generalisation it is impossible to define. It is of the order of the static concept which have the function of tombstones among words. Tombstones, as Mr. Allan Upward points out in his illuminating "Divine Mystery," are intended to keep the spirit down: imprisoned underneath in the vault, and that is what words like "Pleasure" manage to do. They blur over with an abstract generality the positive active element in that which they pretend to name. Their only use is to create seemingly irreconcilable opposites, playing with which manages to keep the professors and scholars from swelling the ranks of the unemployed. They go in pairs: and "self-sacrifice" is the verbal opposite which nicely balance "Pleasure." Both represent mental confusion, and we suggest to Mr. Meulen the advisability of abandoning both to the exclusive use of scholars and clergymen: putting in their place the active verbal from which comes nearest to expressing what they suggest rather than what they possess of meaning.
To "please" oneself is to set one's energies moving in a channel in which they run readily and with comfort: that is a definition which for the moment will do for "Pleasure"; to sacrifice oneself is to set them on enterprises where they move reluctantly and with hardship. The motor-power in both cases comes from the self: the motive is self-satisfaction and fulfilment. Whether the issue is satisfactory or not is more or less accidental: with judgment it tends to become less rather than more. To "please oneself" and to "sacrifice oneself" are in the main, activities by the way, like the passing through roads of varying quality in the course of a long journey. A sturdy traveller will take them as they come philosophically. On occasion, the passing over a favourable tract will be undertaken and repeated solely to enjoy the ease and facility with which it can be covered: as in advance the dancers will move continuously round the floor. And on the other hand, a difficult stretch will be undertaken and repeated in order to enjoy the ultimate satisfaction at not having been defeated by its rigours: as in the more difficult feats of mountain-climbing or in any of the "tasks" of "self-sacrifice" which men will set themselves to prove they can go through with them. It is a healthy method of hardening and weathering, and great fun as long as no one is mistaken by it. Whether men are "pleasing" them selves or "sacrificing" themselves they are enjoying themselves very well indeed, particularly in the latter if they have an audience. Probably because in the long history of experience the "hardening" process makes men more fit and inclined to venture into new fields than does the lingering over the facile and comfortable, the "hardening" always wins the applause of general common-sense, and it is because of this that instead of calling itself doggedness or sport, the "hardeners" have become accustomed to get their solatium in a left-handed way by calling their form of amusement "self-sacrifice." If anyone speaks of "self-sacrifice" it is a certainty they are speaking to an audience, real or imaginary. They are getting at someone. They would call it a good old sport if they felt they were quite, quite alone.
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We have of course been speaking of "pleasures" definitely entered upon as diversions and "self-sacrifice" adopted as a tonic with a strong probability of amusement in the form of applause rounding it off at the finish. Both are hobbies, off the track of life's main courses. The "self-sacrifice" which has sprung up by instinct and veined itself into the mesh of life without any thought of pleasure or an audience is not so easy to explain. Perhaps the feature which best helps to explain it is the fact that it never regards itself as "self-sacrifice." The term is applied by onlookers after the event. The "sacrifices" of love in any of its forms in the eyes of the makers of them are desires whose frustration would be resented in a degree which itself explains the sacrifice. Of the desire to alleviate suffering, and the supposed existence of goodwill we have already spoken. In relation to the former it is to be noted that sensitiveness, the form to which vital power runs, and the power to inflict suffering is curbed by the sensitiveness which makes the imagination of the suffering caused proportionately hateful. We mind our manners and our ways for our own sake. As for goodwill, it has no real existence. Sensitiveness, stupidity, and fear explain every form of its seeming appearance. The feeble or unintelligent man is ready to be persuaded into a belief that it exists because the schemes which are erected on it as a basis seem to meet his difficulties. But he is thinking of goodwill as existent not so much in himself as in the powerful: he expects them to adopt its precepts: whereas they, on the contrary, merely see in it, a happy psychology for "government by consent." The poor expect "goodwill" to give them "liberty"; the rich look to it to secure a docile serving community. In a few thousand years, after experimenting with every "constructive" scheme of government, "divine" and human, men will begin to understand that the only will existent is Self-will.
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There remains the concept of chivalry: the strongest evidence to be offered in support of "self-sacrifice." If we allow the activity suggested by chivalry to emerge from under the weighty slab of the concept, it stands as the fairly habitual practice among men and women of voluntarily stepping into a position of danger in order to allow some other weaker than themselves to take up the more advantageous position. The difficulty about chivalry is that the chivalrous are at once so noble and modest that they really cannot be run through a cross-examination. One is thrown back upon one's own feebly chivalrous tendencies about which to be brutally honest. First,-perhaps foremost-on spectacular occasions at any rate, one is chivalrous because it is the tradition: one is courageous for lack of the pluck to be a coward. And then its action is not reliable: it is jumpy and at the mercy of nerves: it is not likely that there are many "heroes" who cannot conceive the possibility of making one in a stampede. "Nerves," in fact, appear to be an integral concern ("nerves" in the popular sense, that is) in chivalrous conduct. Unless caught in one's feebler moments, there is something steadying in the spectacle of distraught nerves in another person: even when they are occasioned by a danger in which both share. Terror has the appearance of being out of all proportion to the occasion, no matter how serious: and the feeling puts the situation in a new perspective. Whatever the danger is, so great a fear appears excessive. It is strange how commonplace a matter death may look upon occasion, and it is on an occasion when the terror of others has made it assume such diminished significance that the genuinely chivalrous action is performed. It is prompted by pity and a sense of superior tranquility; and the act of "sacrifice" becomes easier than the imagination of another's excessive distress. "Chivalry" becomes a question of sensitiveness therefore, which accepts the lesser of two evils. If that is not the frame of mind of "chivalry" one would like an account of it from one who is chivalrous.
The "ways of men" are complex and various, but they are not past finding out. Speaking humbly as in the presence of "constructive" thinkers, one would suggest that, observed as an artist observes and not as a moralist, they would be as explicit as the "ways of things," that it is only the overlaying by the "constructive" plan that confuses the simple self-assertive principle. Remove the plan, with its unreal labels of sins and virtues, its duties, its "oughts" and "shoulds," and the human riddle will have its chance to declare itself.
Mr. Tucker has informed us that the argument cannot proceed until we have explained something, and on looking through the issues of October Ist, November 15th and later, to find the something, we gather that Mr. Tucker "thinks that we think" it is a sign of insanity for people to "associate for mutual protection on a basis of a contract defining the protective sphere," because we said Proudhon's outline of the Social Contract with the pains and penalties attaching thereto seemed as valuable as a scheme for "building a block of flats as high as St. Paul's with lily-stalks for materials, with a prospectus describing the joys of living therein and the penalties for occupants who damaged the joinery." Well our comment implies nothing of the kind. It is as natural to make contracts-which are nothing more than mutual promises writ impressive with penalties attached-as it is for men to laugh, talk and sigh or dogs to bark. That men make promises anew in face of a world of broken promises shows how ineradicable the instinct is. But as a matter of fact we had not arrived at the point of considering whether contracts were good or bad. The theatricality of Proudhon's style with its faked matter and pompous manner rendered it impossible. One would have had to imagine oneself Cromwell refusing the crown, or Mr. Beerbohm Tree, or a poached egg, before entering into its spirit. As for the lilystalks (it is as horrible as a dental operation to have to apply a two-month-old joke) they were intended to refer to M. Proudhon's assumptions regarding human nature. We meant that the kind of people he describes never walked on earth: that they were unreal: figures with no genuine insides, stuffed out with tracts from the Church of Humanity and the Ethical Society.